People Before Profit blog

N.Y. transit union re-elects Toussaint

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 07:25:00 +0000

Workers’ Correspondence

Roger Toussaint, president of New York’s Transport Workers Union Local 100, has prevailed in a close and hard-fought union election.

The race ended on Dec. 15 with the election of Toussaint for a third three-year term. Candidates running on Toussaint’s “One Union” slate swept the two other highest offices, with the re-election of Ed Watt as secretary treasurer and Darlene Lawson as recording secretary. It appears that One Union candidates have captured three, and possibly four, of seven departmental vice presidencies and have won control of the union’s executive board.

In other results, One Union candidates swept the Transit Authority Surface department (TAS, mainly comprising TWU members working at bus depots in Brooklyn), and the Stations departments. Although previously headed by VPs hostile to Toussaint in this election, votes from these departments contributed significantly to Toussaint’s margin of victory. TAS, in particular, has emerged as an important base of support for Toussaint.

The One Union slate also won significant victories in the union’s Car Equipment Department (CED). The presidential vote in CED went to Toussaint by a slim margin. After a recount, the One Union candidate for departmental vice president was tied with his closest opponent; thus this vice presidential race will have to be re-run. If the One Union candidate wins the re-run, it will be the third case in which a Toussaint supporter will have defeated several other candidates to replace a hostile vice president.

Toussaint ran against four other candidates. Three of these headed slates vying with One Union candidates for union-wide and divisional offices. The stiffest challenge came from the “Rail and Bus United” slate and its presidential candidate Barry Roberts.

The Rail and Bus United slate was cobbled together from the union’s old guard, out of the Manhattan division of the union’s Operating Authority department (OA, comprising TWU members working at Manhattan and Bronx bus depots), and disgruntled former Toussaint allies out of the Maintenance of Way department (MOW, mainly subway maintenance workers).

Rail and Bus United was also reputed to have the backing of former TWU international president and longtime Toussaint foe Sonny Hall. Besides winning victories in the OA department, candidates from the Rail and Bus United slate took many departmental and divisional slots in Toussaint’s former base of support, the MOW department, and defeated a One Union candidate for vice president of the Private Lines department.

Many observers viewed this election as the final chapter of last year’s transit strike. During the election period, anti-union elements speculated that a defeat for Toussaint would represent a repudiation of the strike by the rank and file, a repudiation of Toussaint’s militant approach toward management and a rejection of the politically progressive direction taken by the union under Toussaint’s leadership. These results will likely mute such speculation.

It is widely recognized that the union’s next task will be to heal the wounds opened by the election and achieve unity among the leadership and rank and file.

— Gary Bono, a New York City transit worker

Portuguese public workers battle austerity plan

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 06:55:00 +0000

LISBON, Portugal — A two-day general strike brought this nation to a standstill Nov. 9-10 as 750,000 public workers protested the government’s plan to impose vicious wage and benefit cutbacks at the insistence of the Brussels-based European Union.

This reporter and more than 100 other participants in the ninth annual Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties arrived in Lisbon as the struggle was raging.

We were bused to a solidarity rally in the town of Almata the night of Nov. 11 to express solidarity with these workers and all other working people in struggle around the world. A capacity crowd jammed a theater, waving red flags, singing and chanting.

At issue was the national budget and union-busting labor legislation that Socialist Prime Minister Jose Socrates was attempting to ram through Parliament. While the workers picketed their job sites across the country, the 14 members of Parliament from the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and Green Party denounced the draconian legislation on the floor of Parliament. The two parties have joined in what they call the Unitarian Democratic Coalition, which garnered nearly 600,000 votes in 2005, electing 12 Communist and two Green MPs and 203 local officials.

In an interview at PCP headquarters, Ameri Costa, a member of the PCP labor department, told the World that an estimated 80 percent of public employees — transit workers, school workers, health care and most national and local government agency workers — joined the walkout.

On top of that, oil workers struck Nov. 2-3, idling all the nation’s oil refineries. Lisbon’s subway system was stopped Oct. 30 and again Nov. 7-9, protesting the government’s drive to privatize the public sector as well as the 15.7 percent utility rate increase imposed so far this year.

Costa charged that the government seeks to strip Portuguese workers of all the gains they won in the April 1974 “carnation revolution” that overthrew the Salazar fascist dictatorship. “The government wants to change all the labor legislation, the social functions assigned to the state which we won in the April Revolution,” he said. “They want to push through new legislation that is against public workers, against workers in general and against our national interests.”

The government proposed a 1.5 percent salary increase even though inflation is over 3 percent. Public employees have not had a raise in eight years. All career promotions would be frozen in the Socrates plan. Co-payments for health care would be increased, and for the first time retirees would be forced to pay 1 percent of their pensions for health care.

The government is also demanding restructuring to eliminate 100,000 workers, and outright termination of 187 government agencies and institutes.

“Of course these policies are carried out at the insistence of the European Union in Brussels,” Costa said. “The Portuguese government is blindly obedient to Brussels and their demand for austerity policies even though it has a drastic negative impact on the Portuguese economy. It has greatly reduced the living standards of the Portuguese people. It has limited greatly investment in the public sector so Portugal’s economic development is very, very weak. There are 2 million people in Portugal who live in terrible poverty. The gap between rich and poor is getting wider. The number of unemployed is rising.”

He added, “The government calls these cutbacks ‘reforms,’ but in fact they are ‘counter-reforms.’”

Popular support for the general strike was strong, Costa said. “We verified a much greater sympathy and understanding by the population. People put off visits to hospitals and clinics and other social services. Even the press displayed much more understanding with little hostile commentary. Most of the media coverage was sympathetic.”

One reason is the energetic work of the PCP, which played a leading role in mobilizing a march and rally of 100,000 in Lisbon Oct. 12 to protest the government’s austerity plan. “People came by bus from all over Portugal,” Costa said. “The party must work to create conditions so that this struggle will continue to grow bigger and broader,” he said. “Many trade union leaders now believe that a nationwide general strike of all workers in Portugal is possible.”

greenerpastures21212 @ yahoo.com

24th W.Va. miner killed on job

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 06:49:00 +0000

Longtime residents of this state remark, “The only time West Virginia gets on the news is when there is a mining disaster or when a miner dies at work.” The state was back in the news Dec. 17, when miner John Elliott, 26, of Newburg, was killed in a roof fall.

According to an administrator at the state’s Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training, three miners were riding down into the mine when the roof collapsed, killing Elliott.

The mine, Prime No. 1, near Morgantown, is owned by the Dana Mining Co. The 45 miners at Prime No. 1 produce 500,000 tons of coal a year, valued at $21 million.

Elliott is the 24th West Virginia miner to die at work this year, making it the bloodiest year since 1981, when 28 miners were killed in the state. Although only the second largest coal producing state, West Virginia ranks first in deaths in the mines this year. Kentucky is second with 16 miners who will not be home for Christmas.

Huge victory for labor in southwest Texas

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 06:32:00 +0000

Labor-backed Ciro Rodriguez defeated Republican Henry Bonilla, a seven-term incumbent, in Texas’ 23rd Congressional District, delivering a knockout blow to the right wing. Rodriguez garnered 54 percent of the vote in the Dec. 12 runoff election, adding another Democrat to Congress. Democrats will have a 233-202 majority over Republicans in 2007.

The 23rd CD, which is located in the southwestern part of Texas and which abuts San Antonio, is the largest congressional district in the state.

Bonilla had a near-zero percent voting record supporting working families, whereas Rodriguez had a near-100-percent pro-labor record. Organized labor and its allies ran a tremendous get-out-the-vote effort, resulting in this victory in a district that had previously been thought to be up for grabs. The American Postal Workers’ Union Local 195 and the United Transportation Union members were key in the campaign.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also provided support to counter Bonilla’s huge financial advantage.

Bonilla’s backing of the border wall clearly hurt him as well as his negative campaign attack ads against Rodriguez and his continued support for the disgraced former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and President Bush.

This was the second time this year that DeLay’s redistricting plan resulted in disaster for the GOP in Texas. Labor-backed Democrat Nick Lampson delivered the first punch to the right wing when he won the seat previously held by DeLay in the Houston area. DeLay was forced to resign after being indicted for money-laundering.

DeLay maneuvered in the early 2000s to get an unconstitutional redistricting map passed in the Legislature, which was supposed to benefit Bonilla by injecting an additional 100,000 Republicans who are mainly white into the 23rd CD. But the Supreme Court threw out the DeLay map. A special runoff election was called after no one got more than 50 percent of the vote on Nov. 7.

Rodriguez, who held a House seat from 1997-2004, was welcomed back to Washington with an appointment to a seat on the House Appropriations committee that oversees government spending. He will represent a U.S.-Mexico border district where communities still lack running water and electricity. He is also known to support veterans’ benefits, having previously served on the Veterans Affairs and Armed Services committees. However, he is not hawkish, and he opposed the 2002 resolution that led to the war in Iraq.

Working people in south Texas made a dramatic statement as to whose side they are on, many activists commented.

phill2 @ houston.rr.com

Iraqi unions reject foreign control of oil

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 06:24:00 +0000

Leaders of Iraq’s labor movement have criticized Iraqi government plans to hand control over the country’s oil production to multinational companies.

At a Dec. 14 meeting in Amman, Jordan, leaders of Iraq’s five trade union federations —representing hundreds of thousands of workers — called for a fundamental rethinking of the forthcoming oil law, which is designed to allow foreign investment in the oil sector. The law, prepared by an Iraqi cabinet committee, is expected to be presented to the Iraqi Parliament for ratification in the coming weeks.

The Amman meeting was attended by senior officials of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers, the Federation of Oil Unions, the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq, the Kurdistan General Workers Syndicate Union and the Iraqi Kurdistan Workers Syndicate Union. It was organized by the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center.

The opposition by Iraq’s powerful trade unions will dismay the U.S. government, which is anxious to see the law in place by the end of the year.

Since the summer, U.S. officials have been calling for an oil law to encourage foreign investment in Iraq’s oil — a call reiterated by the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group in its report this month. For example, in October, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. George Casey, top U.S. military commander in Iraq, listed the passing of such a law as one of the “milestones” they were pressuring the Iraqi government to deliver. Similar calls have been made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Energy Secretary Sam Bodman. The Iraq Study Group Report recommends that the U.S. government both advise on writing an oil law, and encourage international oil companies to invest. It also calls for ending subsidized oil prices for the Iraqi people.

The labor leaders criticized the major role for foreign companies in the draft law, which specifies that up to two-thirds of Iraq’s known reserves would be developed by multinationals under contracts lasting for 15 to 20 years (known as “production sharing agreements”). This policy would be a radical change for Iraq’s oil industry, which has been in the public sector for more than three decades — and would break from normal practice in the Middle East among Iraq’s neighbors.

In a joint statement, the trade unions rejected “the handing of control over oil to foreign companies, whose aim is to make big profits at the expense of the Iraqi people and to rob the national wealth, according to long-term, unfair contracts that undermine the sovereignty of the state and the dignity of the Iraqi people.” The statement added that this was a “red line” they would not allow to be crossed. An English translation of the statement is available at www.carbonweb.org.

They were also angry at their exclusion from the drafting process and called for delaying the law to allow proper consultation. “The Iraqi people refuse to allow the future of oil to be decided behind closed doors,” they stated.

Hasan Jum’a, president of the Federation of Oil Unions, commented, “This law has a lot of problems. It was prepared without consulting Iraqi experts, Iraqi civil society or trade unions. We reject this draft and demand more time to debate the law.”

Adnan Saffar, member of the executive committee of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers, added, “The Iraqi national interest is surrendered in this law which allows foreign companies investment terms that exploit Iraq’s oil wealth. They benefit the foreign investors more than they benefit Iraqi workers, through long-term oil contracts that negatively impact Iraq’s sovereignty and national independence.”

Stop victimizing workers: Labor, community groups mobilize against immigration raids

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 06:17:00 +0000

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided Swift & Co. meat-processing plants in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and Utah last week, arresting 1,282 undocumented workers. It was the largest-ever workplace assault on immigrant workers. But the raids have generated an outpouring of support for the workers and their families, with many calls for a halt to raids and for comprehensive immigration reform that guarantees workers’ rights.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents 10,000 Swift workers, said ICE agents marched into the plants with military weapons, terrorizing workers. Families were ripped apart, leaving traumatized children stranded. In some cases parents were transported to detention centers in distant cities and denied the opportunity to make a phone call.

“This kind of action is totally uncalled for,” Mark Lauritsen, UFCW vice president and director of the union’s Food Processing, Packing, and Manufacturing division, said in a statement. “It’s designed to punish workers for working hard every day, contributing to the success of their companies and communities. They are innocent victims in an immigration system that has been hijacked by corporations for the purpose of importing an exploitable workforce.”

“In effect, ICE is criminalizing people for going to work,” he said. “It’s time for the federal government to stop victimizing workers and reform our immigration system.”

The union went to court seeking an immediate federal injunction to stop such attacks on its workers.

More than 1,000 ICE agents raided Swift plants in Greeley, Colo.; Grand Island, Neb.; Cactus, Texas; Hyrum, Utah; Marshalltown, Iowa; and Worthington, Minn., on Dec. 12. About 600 of those arrested are Mexican. The others are mostly Guatemalan, Honduran, El Salvadoran, Peruvian, Laotian, Sudanese and Ethiopian. The ICE claimed the raids were part of an investigation into undocumented workers using other people’s identities to secure U.S. jobs.

But Mark Froemke, a Minnesota AFL-CIO executive board member, thinks the real aim was to instill anti-immigrant fear in the public. “It’s obvious that the raids are placating right-wing elements and the entire Bush constituency,” he said.

Froemke, a sugar beet worker in northern Minnesota, went to help build labor/community support for the immigrant workers in Worthington last week. The fear people felt there is hard to comprehend, he said. “It doesn’t really hit you until you’re there.”

In Worthington, a town of 12,000, 230 workers were arrested. Many family members hid or took shelter in churches, fearing they might be seized next. Many others went to the local union hall trying to locate loved ones who were missing.

Among them was Lae Khothasime, 24, a U.S. citizen from Thailand whose fiancé was arrested. Khothasime, mother of two young children, told the World her fiancé, who is from Guatemala, is being held in jail awaiting immigration court.

“He got taken away. I just cried and cried,” she said. She has visited him twice and said she breaks out in tears each time. “He told me to be strong for the kids,” she added.

Mike Potter, president of UFCW Local 1161 in Worthington, said he was “appalled and overwhelmed” by the raids. “People were crying and being handcuffed. It was something I never witnessed or experienced before.”

Potter said the union hall has had over 100 volunteers helping distribute food, locating loved ones, setting up aid funds, supplying holiday gifts and working with churches and community groups assisting the families who were torn apart by the raid. Potter said the entire community is affected, and expressed hope that the new Congress comes up with immigration reform that protects workers’ rights. “I hope nothing like this ever happens again,” he said.

Nallely, one of the volunteers, said people are scared, buying bus tickets and preparing to move out of Worthington because of the raid. “They come here to try and have a better life and work,” she said. “They don’t steal those papers, they have to buy them and then they use them in order to work. All they do is work!”

Local 1161 Secretary-Treasurer Jose Pedro Lira said, “Workers’ families are suffering from being separated. But the churches, the union and the community are united to help these families.” Lira, a U.S. citizen originally from Mexico, has lived in Worthington for 17 years and has worked at the Swift plant for seven of those years. “Immigrants are not criminals, we are not taking jobs away from anyone,” he said.

Worthington Mayor Alan Oberloh, speaking by phone from his office, said neither he nor the police department were involved in the raid. He said they wanted to assure the public they would not arrest or turn in undocumented workers to immigration officials.

Oberloh said our immigration laws are broken and until real reform is done all efforts to resolve immigration issues are going to be ineffective.

Froemke, of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, pointed out that the economies of many countries are being exploited through “free trade” agreements that eventually cause hardships for millions of people. “People leave their homeland because of economic desperation and take very difficult jobs here, extremely hard human-busting labor,” he said.

Immigrant workers “want what everybody wants, a job, a decent standard of living and to be part of a community,” Froemke said.

plozano @ pww.org

Treatment of Immigrant Workers Nationwide in Meatpacking Plants Violates Basic Worker Rights

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 06:34:00 +0000

Immigration Reform is key to Preventing Identity Theft and to End Family Separation Chicago—With recent raids in meatpacking plants in various states, United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 881 protests this treatment of workers and calls upon elected officials to send a message to employers and the Federal Government about its aggressive treatment of workers.

“Local 881 UFCW believes that all workers should have due process when their immigration status is at question,” said Ron Powell, President of Local 881 and UFCW International Vice President. “Certainly, violent and cruel means of intimidating workers is completely unacceptable. Many of these immigrant workers are from Africa, Asia, Central and South America – we are talking about workers coming to the United States from all over the globe who are being treated in an inhumane manner.”

Just recently, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents marched into plants with military weapons, herding, segregating, and terrorizing workers. Because these violent raids have left families ripped apart, traumatized children stranded at school and denied workers any opportunity to contact their families, human rights and labor organizations are in a position to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Although Representatives and attorneys with the UFCW International and various locals have sought to represent these workers, they have been denied access to the detained workers.

“We should be cautious about what is going on in other states so that we do not allow that same treatment of workers to occur here in Illinois,” said State Senator Martin Sandoval (D-Chicago) and Chairman of the Illinois Senate Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. “It is cruel and unnecessary for the Federal Government to use these outrageous tactics on many workers who show up to these meatpacking plants to simply do their job and support their families.”

This action by ICE puts additional pressure on the new Congress to address a failed immigration system. The current system does nothing more than create an environment where immigrant workers are caught in a situation where falsifying documents and breaking the law is the only way get work until they are faced by ICE agents. Worksite raids with armed agents are not the answer to the nationwide call for immigration reform. In that spirit, Local 881 UFCW stands with the UFCW International urging Congress to immediately look into how workers in the United States can be provided with a humane, systematic and comprehensive immigration policy that will protect worker rights, prevent identify theft among those who are in the U.S. legally, and allow workers a pathway to citizenship.”

Local 881 UFCW represents 36,000 members employed in retail food and drug stores throughout Illinois and Northwest Indiana, as well as a professional division comprised of health and nursing home workers, barbers and cosmetologists, and workers in other retail and service industries. Among the companies under contract with Local 881 are Jewel Food Stores, Osco Drug, Cub, Dominick’s Finer Foods, Kroger, Schnucks, and many smaller chains and independent stores, as well as nursing homes and other business establishments. Local 881 is among the largest affiliates of the United Food Commercial Workers International Union, which represents 1.4 million members in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.

Bay Area unions support Alcatraz ferry workers

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 07:45:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO — A thousand workers from unions throughout the Bay Area joined in a march and rally on this city’s historic waterfront Dec. 9. The action supported union workers who lost their jobs when ferry service to Alcatraz Island was taken over by a nonunion company. Local 10, the ILWU’s longshore local, called a “stop-work meeting,” halting all Bay Area maritime cargo handling except the Concord Naval Weapons Station during the day shift.

The workers’ struggle began in fall 2005, when the Bush administration’s National Park Service chose the nonunion Hornblower Yachts to replace the unionized firm which for years had operated the ferry service to Alcatraz. Alcatraz is a Park Service national historic lanmark.

Displaced were 50 workers, members of the Inlandboatmen’s Union (IBU) — the Marine Division of the ILWU — and the Masters, Mates and Pilots (MMP), who had been employed on the Alcatraz run.

After a year of legal and other struggles to block the move, including efforts by soon-to-be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to support the workers, Hornblower began operating the ferry last September. The unions have been picketing Hornblower’s facilities, and they are urging a boycott of the Alcatraz ferries.

Hornblower head Terry MacRae “wants to be the Wal-Mart of the harbor,” said IBU member Ty Willis, a worker on another cruise fleet, as he waited for the march to start. While Hornblower seeks to slash the pay and benefits of the ferry workers, it is raising the price to ferry riders, he said.

“We’ve had people up and down the coast support us — even a busload of Russian tourists said they wouldn’t go to Alcatraz,” Willis added.

Picking up on the international solidarity theme, Robert Estrada, a 21-year waterfront worker displaced after five years on the Alcatraz run, said the situation is being watched “not only by workers here, but all over the world. We’ve received support from England, Japan, Australia and elsewhere.”

Estrada marched with his wife, Liza Estrada, and their 5-year-old daughter, Christiana. Despite the disruption experienced by his own family, Robert Estrada’s biggest concern was the broader threat to the waterfront community. “We don’t want a return to the situation in the 1930s,” he said.

As she prepared to lead the march, Marina Secchitano, the IBU’s San Francisco regional director, called the situation with Hornblower part of “the Bush administration’s attack on all workers.” But, she added, “The ILWU, organized labor and working people have turned the tide on the Bush administration and won’t stand for this anymore.”

Joining the IBU on the march were members of area ILWU longshore, warehouse and clerks’ locals as well as SEIU janitors and public workers, bus drivers, hotel and restaurant workers, building trades workers, machinists, teamsters, office and professional workers.

Many speakers and participants evoked the earlier dramatic history of the area, including the historic 1934 San Francisco general strike in which unionists throughout the city came to the support of longshore workers brutally attacked by police.

The unions are demanding that all the displaced workers be rehired under their former employment conditions with back pay and benefits, and that the unions be recognized under the successorship doctrine.

mbechtel @ pww.org

Illinois hikes minimum wage, but not enough

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 07:02:00 +0000

CHICAGO — The Illinois Legislature wasted no time heeding the national voters’ mandate, overwhelmingly passing a bill to raise the state’s minimum wage from $6.50 an hour to $7.50 effective next July. The bill, which Gov. Rod Blagojevich said he looks forward to signing, will make the Illinois minimum wage one of the nation’s highest.

The measure provides for the minimum to increase 25 cents a year until it hits $8.25 an hour in 2010.

According to figures released by Blagojevich’s office, the wage increase will boost the average annual income for nearly 650,000 full-time minimum wage workers and their children from $13,520 to $15,600 next year. By 2010, the yearly pay for a full-time minimum wage earner will be $17,160. The federal government defined the poverty level as $15,577 for a family of three in 2005.

For many low-income workers, a job near minimum wage is their only option. The federal minimum wage is currently $5.15 an hour and has not moved since 1997. Adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum is at its lowest level since 1955.

The new Democratic majority in Congress plans to push the minimum wage nationwide to $7.25 an hour. Montana, Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nevada and Ohio voters approved minimum wage increases on Nov. 7. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia will have 2007 minimum wages above the federal level.

Still, many low-income workers say the wage increase is not enough and does not provide a way out of poverty, especially since prices for necessities such as housing and transportation have also risen.

“People should at least make $10 an hour — living in Chicago is too high, especially for people who have kids and pay bills,” said Tony Jones as he stopped to talk at the North Riverside Park Mall, just outside of Chicago. “It’s not enough.”

Wardell Porter, 48, an African American self-employed painter who was also shopping at the mall, said, “I know a lot of people who are going to be affected by this, but people still have to struggle. People still have to pay bills, the babysitters, you have to freeze in the winter because you can’t pay the heat, and starve in the summer in order to stay cool.”

Porter noted that jobs like selling newspapers, collecting glass bottles or shinning shoes used to be things he did as a youth. Now he sees grown men having to do this, just to get by. “There ain’t no jobs,” he said. “And you wonder why folks do wrong.”

Jason Paul, 20, an African American, is a psychology major at Malcolm X College in Chicago and works as a sales representative for Bally’s Fitness at the mall. He commented, “The amount of people in poverty is messed up, and something can be done about this.” He added, “We need someone to take a stand.”

The Illinois bill includes a provision that will allow employers to pay newly hired workers during their first three months on the job and teens under 18 a wage 50 cents an hour less than the minimum.

Nevertheless Latoya Johnson, 17, who works at McDonald’s, welcomed the wage increase. “I think the minimum wage should go up,” she said. “I work too hard to make only $6.50 an hour. I’m going to see a big difference in my paychecks.”

Johnson’s manager Giovanna Garzon, 19, agreed the raise is good. “We deserve it, but when they increase the wages, then they will increase the products; there are good things and bad,” she said. Garzon said unequal pay and paying workers 50 cents less if they are under the age of 18 is unfair. “Less pay is bad — it should be equal because they are still going to have to work just as hard,” she said.

Beth Spencer, communications director of the Illinois AFL-CIO, called raising the minimum wage “so important” given the rising cost of living. “Working and living on a minimum wage does not cut it,” she said.

Nationwide a minimum wage hike would affect 1.9 million hourly workers who make minimum wage and raise wages for an estimated 6.5 million workers, or 4 percent of the work force — janitors, waitstaff, security guards, cashiers and store clerks — according to the Economic Policy Institute. One-quarter of hourly workers making minimum wage are teenagers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Low wages coupled with increased housing costs have put more people at risk of being homeless. For example, 28 percent of homeless adults in Louisville, Ky., shelters have jobs but can’t afford housing, according to the Louisville Coalition for the Homeless.

Although Illinois is on the map in the fight to raise the minimum wage, lawmakers here also moved to give themselves and other top state officials a hefty 15.6 percent pay raise.

plozano @ pww.org

Organize! Army of union stewards deploys for Employee Free Choice Act

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 06:52:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — “Union power’s on the rise, now’s the time to organize!”

More than 1,000 union members took up that chant as they marched to Capitol Hill, Dec. 8, still riding high from labor’s huge victory in the Nov. 7 midterm elections. They were marching to demand that the new Democratic-majority Congress act on labor’s legislative agenda, including an increase in the minimum wage to $7.50 an hour and the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

The march and rally on Human Rights Day was the high point of the AFL-CIO Organizing Summit Dec. 8-9 at a nearby hotel, marked by calls for launching the most massive organizing drive since the 1940s led by a half-million-strong “stewards army” and increased support from labor for the struggles of its community allies.

The Employee Free Choice Act would change the nation’s labor law to recognize a union when the majority of workers sign authorization cards. The current process allows employers to insist on a two-stage process that includes both card signing and voting supervised by the National Labor Relations Board.

It’s employer abuse of this drawn out process that accounts for the fact that every 23 minutes an employer fires or discriminates against a worker in the U.S. for his or her union activity, Mary Beth Maxwell of American Rights at Work told the summit. By streamlining the process, increasing employer penalties and facilitating bargaining for a first contract, the EFCA is expected to clear the way for millions of the 60 percent of American workers who say they want a union to achieve their goal.

Fred Mason, president of the Maryland-D.C. AFL-CIO, told the World, “We ran a marathon in the midterm elections and we won. Now it’s time to turn it into a sprint, to win passage of this legislation workers need to exercise their right to organize.”

Stewart Acuff, director of the AFL-CIO Organizing Department, said the Nov. 7 election “is the biggest and most significant electoral victory” in a generation. “We have broken the stranglehold of the radical, right-wing Republicans,” he told the World. “We immediately go from defense to offense. We are ramping up the effort to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to make it harder for employers to intimidate and retaliate against workers who want to form a union.”

The other goal of the “summit” he said, was to “share the best practices and skills development that are needed to run huge non-NLRB organizing drives.”

Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen told of signing up 17,000 Verizon Wireless workers, bringing to 38,000 the number of Verizon employees protected by a CWA contract. “There’s a direct link between the destruction of collective bargaining rights in this country and declining health care and retirement benefits as well as the stagnation of wages,” he told the rally.

Maude Hurd, president of Associated Community Organizations for Reform Now, told the crowd, “ACORN members are low- and moderate-income workers and their families. We see with our own eyes how their lives improve when they are members of unions. When labor is weakened, we all are weakened and when labor is strong we all are strong.”

Jennifer Pae, president of the United States Student Association, said skyrocketing tuition has forced most college students to work at minimum-wage, nonunion jobs. “The right to form a union is a basic human right,” she said. “We too worked to turn out the vote Nov. 7. We will continue to fight for legislation that will help, not hurt, workers.”

Later, the crowd reconvened at the Hyatt-Regency Hotel. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney told the meeting some in the new Congress may complain that labor is demanding “too much too soon. … Our answer is: we didn’t elect you to hesitate. We elected you to liberate.”

Acuff chaired a plenary session in which leaders of the CWA, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee told of their success in organizing hundreds of thousands of workers into unions.

“We must launch an organizing drive like we have not seen in this country in decades,” Acuff said. It will require “a change in our internal union culture, to open up our organizations and bring people in. … We have to run much, much larger campaigns, engage thousands and tens of thousands of workers” and at the same time reach out to allies with the message, “If you’ll make our fight your fight, we’ll make your fight our fight.”

AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, in a statement read by his assistant, Paul Booth, said that life has proven that the AFL-CIO was “right about putting our efforts into the midterm elections. And now many doors are open to us.” McEntee invited the Change to Win unions to return to the fold. “The door is open,” he said, promising their return will be welcome and celebrated.

greenerpastures21212 @ yahoo.com

Roberta Wood contributed to this story.

Texas farm workers La Huelga 40th anniversary reunion to be held

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 07:48:00 +0000

There will be a 40th anniversary reunion of the people who participated in and led the historic farm worker’s strike in Starr County, Texas, in 1966-67 and those who helped organize and mobilize to aid the struggle on Dec. 11 from 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. at the Holiday Inn Express in Rio Grande City, Texas. A press conference will be held there at 12:30 p.m.

For many this will be the first time they have been together since the 1960s. We are joining together to honor their struggle for the most basic human rights and the impact it has had in Texas and the U.S.

On June 1, 1966 over 400 farm workers voted to strike the melon and vegetable growers in Starr County, Texas. Inspired by the Grape Strike that began in California’s Central Valley in the fall of 1965, and earning wages averaging 70 cents an hour, farm workers wanted a living wage and decent working conditions. When they petitioned the growers they were refused. The workers walked out of the fields. “La Huelga” was underway!

The growers responded by recruiting workers from outside of the area, including from Mexico which was just across the river. The strike continued for over a year and resulted in a few union contracts signed with the few Latino growers before Hurricane Beulah devastated the area. However, the strike and related actions inspired several generations of activists and political leaders and energized the Latino movement for civil rights, economic, political and social justice.

For more information: Bill Chandler (601) 594-3564; Alejandro Moreno (956) 624-1027

Sponsored by the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance and the Southern Human Rights Organizers Network.

Labor choruses sing for peace, workers rights

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 10:03:00 +0000

CD REVIEW

The Great Choral Convergence Live

Produced by Bobbie Rabinowitz

Oasis Recordings, 2006

$14.95

Available at cdbaby.com/cd/greatchoralcon

Attend a rally or march these days and your spirits will likely be lifted by a labor chorus singing songs, some old and well-loved, but also new ones full of fightback against Wal-Mart’s union-busting or the Bush-Cheney war on working people at home and abroad.

A new compact disc titled “The Great Choral Convergence Live” samples songs by amateur ensembles, remarkable not only for the infectious enthusiasm of the singers, but also by the high caliber of their musicality.

When half a million antiwar protesters marched down Broadway on April 29, the New York Labor Chorus was present singing and marching.

The Seattle Peace Chorus performed at the Veterans for Peace convention in Seattle last summer and was greeted with a standing ovation. They also perform together with the Seattle Labor Chorus, an equally acclaimed group in the Pacific Northwest.

The vets also traveled up to the Peace Arch on the U.S.-Canadian border for a rally with U.S. soldiers who fled to Canada to avoid combat in Iraq. At the rally, Solidarity Notes, a labor chorus based in Vancouver, B.C., sang Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” in a version made famous by the great African American personality Paul Robeson, who sang at the Peace Arch in 1952.

Now listeners have the chance to enjoy these choruses who play such a big role in reviving working-class culture and teaching new generations songs that our parents and grandparents sang as they marched.

My favorites were the haunting melodies borrowed from South African choral groups such as “Askikatali” (Freedom), sung by Fruit of Labor Singing Ensemble. There is also a beautiful medley of songs from the Spanish Civil War.

One of the most powerful songs on the CD is the simple, straightforward rendition of Florence Reece’s “Which Side Are You On?” Another is “Torn Screen Door,” sung by the Seattle Labor Chorus, which captures in that one image the abandonment of our inner cities so painfully evident now in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Bringing the groups together in a “choral convergence” was the brainchild of Bobbie Rabinowitz, a veteran labor activist and a founding member of the New York Labor Chorus.

Rabinowitz, who now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, writes that songs on the CD are “the best of the best of a historic concert [in 2004] … well-loved songs of the civil rights struggle, the anti-apartheid struggle and some newly composed songs for these trying times.”

Pete Seeger comments, “The six labor choruses, together, show the power of song as a force for social change.”

Folk music, including choral singing, was strongly promoted by the Communist Party, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and other left and progressive organizations during the 1930s and 1940s.

Rabinowitz points out that the Cold War witch-hunters targeted this great cultural flowering during the 1950s and 1960s.

“The existence of these choruses represents a revival and resurgence of a long history of labor union and fraternal working people’s choruses dating back to the 1920s and 1930s,” she continues. “Most went out of business during the repressive McCarthy period.”

Janet Stecher, director of the Seattle Labor Chorus, told the World that her chorus won first prize among 50 choruses that performed in the annual “Figgy Pudding” open-air street concert to benefit the Pike Place Market Senior Clinic in Seattle.

In September, the Seattle group performed during a “Drink-in” for the Unite Here union at a Westin Hotel in Seattle, in solidarity with Westin Hotel workers. Lou Truskoff, a member of the chorus, wrote a song for the event based on the old hymn, “Bright Morning Stars Are Rising.” His version goes, “We are hotel workers rising and it is time we were paid a living wage.”

Seeger was the father of the Seattle Labor Chorus, said Stecher. “He was coming to perform at the Pacific Northwest Folk Life Festival 10 years ago and he wanted a chorus to back him up.” The rest, she said, is history.

Stecher said labor choruses have had “a long trajectory of ebb and flow. But yes, right now we are on the upswing.” She had not yet received her copy of the CD. “But I was there [at the concert]. If our lives were not so complicated, I would say it is time to have another one. It gives us critical mass when we get together like that, a sense that we are everywhere.”

greenerpastures21212 @ yahoo.com

Housing costs: Why cant union workers live in NYC?

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 07:23:00 +0000

Workers’ Correspondence

New York City’s rapidly increasing cost of living makes residency within its five boroughs unaffordable. During recent contract negotiations between the city and AFSCME DC 37 moves were made toward giving public workers the right to live in six counties outside of the city.

The police and fire departments already have agreements allowing their workers to live outside the city. This is a complicated issue. Historically, city residents pressed the City Council to pass an ordinance barring police officers from living outside the city, a move aimed at preventing police brutality. Victims’ families in African American and Latino communities believed that officers living in all-white suburbs were more likely to be tainted with racism and had no connection with the people they were supposed to protect. The desire to have police live where they work has some parallels with the feeling that other city workers should live in the same neighborhoods as the residents they are providing services for.

However, many union leaders now oppose residency requirements because of the city’s impossible housing costs. While this is certainly the case, perhaps unions should take the position that the city should adopt policies enabling public workers to live where they are servicing their constituents.

The easing of the residency requirement is not going to help public workers do a better job but rather the added commuting time will add stress to their daily lives. A representative of DC 37 told me recently that some of his members are traveling two and a half hours a day, one way.

Unions don’t make housing policy, but they have political clout — especially here in New York. They should pressure representatives to curb the market forces that price the average worker out. Ways we can do this include building labor-community coalitions to preserve and extend public housing, rent control and stabilization, and opposing development projects that place profits above human needs.

A stadium project on Manhattan’s west side was defeated by a grassroots neighbor-to-neighbor campaign. Immediately after its defeat, Mayor Bloomberg dropped it like a hot potato and the mass media followed suit.

Another example is the Atlantic Yards project to build a mega arena and housing project in Brooklyn. This project will displace 3,000 families, but only 250 of these will be eligible for new apartments. Nearly $2 billion in public funds is providing more than half the funding for the project. The community is in court at this time trying to reverse the decision of the governor’s development agency, the Empire State Development Corp., to go through with this project.

The courageous stand taken against the mayor and Gov. George Pataki last December by TWU Local 100 spoke to all public workers who were tired of givebacks and cutbacks.

DC 37’s new contract is a big improvement over the previous one, which had left public workers behind in wages and benefits. The new contract provides an across-the-board wage increase of 9.5 percent over 32 months, a $40 million contribution to the union’s Health and Security Fund, and no givebacks on pensions or starting salaries.

The United Federation of Teachers has just signed off on a favorable contract 11 months early. This has given impetus to the coalition of public workers headed by UFT President Randi Weingarten which includes an incredible cross-section of workers from national and international unions like the Teamsters and SEIU. This coalition of public workers can be the vehicle to pressure the mayor to change the housing policies in this great city to meet the needs of its people.

gfalsetta @ cpusa.org

Coal miners still await action for safe mines

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 07:20:00 +0000

PITTSBURGH — Mining is a basic industry, not given to fluff or mounds of paper. Despite the history-making call by West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin to halt coal production in the state in the wake of the Jan. 2, 2006, Sago Mine disaster, which took the lives of 12 miners, there are few changes in the mines to protect the men and women who work in them to help keep the lights on.

Eleven months later, with winter’s dry air creating even more hazards, mounds of paper continue to grow with a rash of reports released in past weeks.

The investigation into the disaster at the Sago Mine, which is owned by International Coal Group (ICG), demonstrated that the 12 trapped miners died from prolonged exposure to carbon dioxide. Lone survivor Randall McCloy Jr. testified that four of the self-contained self-rescuers (SCSRs), breathing devices that are supposed to keep miners alive in toxic underground atmospheres until help arrives, did not work. The crew had to share their breathable air.

Just this month, ICG sent at least six miners underground with defective SCSRs at the company’s Wolf Run Mine, near Fairmont, W.Va. State and federal mine agencies have issued a citation against ICG, once again.

Ira Gamm, spokesman for ICG, told the Charleston Gazette that the company expects individual miners to inspect their SCSRs daily. But the company said it would not contest the state citation.

Meanwhile, ICG reported third-quarter gross profits of over $15 million. To date, gross profits for ICG in the current fiscal year total $59.7 million, according to the company.

Imposing fines on mining companies, which coal operators can challenge in court, to enforce strict mine safety laws at the state and federal level is not working, said West Virginia state Mine safety chief Ron Wooten. “I have a feeling about penalties,” he told The Associated Press, a feeling that “civil penalties don’t necessarily work.”

While he did not release details of the state’s new enforcement strategy, the state is preparing to take over inspection and certification of all SCSRs, a task that has until now been left up to federal inspectors.

Another hint of potential change came Nov. 28 when West Virginia pulled the state mining licenses of seven foremen at A.T. Massey’s Alma No. 1 Mine.

“I can tell you that to our knowledge this is the largest number of decertifications that the office has recommended,” Caryn Gresham, spokeswoman for the West Virginia Office of Miner’s Health, Safety and Training, told the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Basically, the state of West Virginia permanently fired four bosses from ever working in the state’s mines, and temporarily suspended three others.

The unprecedented state action followed a report on the deadly fire inside Alma No. 1 two weeks after Sago. At the Alma mine Don I. Bragg, 33, and Ellery Elvis Hatfield, 47, died at work. The report cited defective sprinklers, disconnected fire alarms and incomplete inspections by federal agents as contributing to the fatal fire.

The mine was “set up to be a death trap in the event of an accident and that’s what it became,” said United Mine Workers union President Cecil Roberts. “These are Massey management’s responsibilities. These are things they’re supposed to be staying on top of.

“The report clearly shows that this is a tragedy that didn’t have to happen,” he said. “This is yet another example of what happens when upper management puts pressure on a mine to ‘run coal’ before doing anything else.”

dwinebr696 @ aol.com

Labor-backed candidate battles DeLay crony in southwest Texas

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 06:38:00 +0000

News Analysis

The race for the 23rd Congressional District Seat is as hot as a San Antonio jalapeño pepper. Labor-backed Democrat Ciro Rodriguez is pitted in a Dec. 12 runoff election against Bush Republican Henry Bonilla, who has close ties to disgraced former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

The contrast between Rodriguez and Bonilla couldn’t be clearer. The AFL-CIO rates Rodriguez’s pro-labor voting record at a lifetime 99 percent, while Bonilla weighs in with a lifetime 6 percent.

Rodriguez is fighting hard to win the seat, and is being helped by House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi as well as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He also has the AFL-CIO COPE endorsement.

The AFL-CIO and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) are focusing on a get-out-the-vote effort.

The San Antonio Express-News pointed out that “if Republicans seem to be working to keep the Latino vote low in Texas’ 23rd CD — by rushing the election, setting it on a Catholic feast day and keeping the early voting period short — it isn’t the first time.” Republicans, including DeLay, have worked very hard to keep Bonilla in office. Their machinations, however, led to DeLay’s fall from power.

DeLay engineered a redistricting plan in 2003 that favored Bonilla, who was re-elected in 2004, by redrawing the boundaries to reduce the number of Mexican American voters in the district, which now encompasses the southwestern part of Texas and a chunk of San Antonio’s south side. DeLay’s use of corporate money to win a Texas House majority raised many eyebrows and led to investigations.

First elected in 1992, Bonilla is the only Mexican-American Republican to be elected to the U.S. House. Since then he has teamed up with DeLay, Newt Gingrich and President George W. Bush. With each re-election, his Mexican American support has slipped and in 2002, only 8 percent of Latinos voted for him.

Widely criticized for his close ties to Bush, Bonilla’s own web site clearly identifies which side he is on: “Henry has also fought to rein in out-of-control agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the National Labor Relations Board. Through his leadership, these agencies’ power grab on America’s small businesses has been stalled.”

As election day approached, Bonilla mounted a bizarre attack on Rodriguez, attempting to link him to “terrorists” for, among other things, his support — along with 128 other lawmakers — of 1999 legislation which would have eliminated the use of secret evidence in deportation cases.

Rodriguez’s campaign denounced Bonilla’s accusations as a “political stunt.”

phill2 @ houston.rr.com

Oakland Airport workers rally for union rights

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 12:34:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. — In a pre-Thanksgiving outpouring of solidarity, over 200 union and community activists gathered at Oakland International Airport Nov. 22 to demand union rights and fair treatment for workers who provide Southwest Airlines passengers with curbside check-in, baggage handling and other services.

Over 120 workers have been seeking to join SEIU Local 1877 since last May, after Southwest contracted with a new firm, Aviation Safeguards, which took over as their employer. The company is refusing to recognize the union through a card-check neutrality agreement.

On the airport’s busiest travel day of the year, passengers were greeted by chants of “Aviation Safeguards, you’re not fair, all we want is our fair share,” as workers and their supporters picketed and rallied near Southwest’s terminal.

Some of the workers, like Danilo Orcullo, are former screeners displaced when the Transportation Security Administration took over that function after Sept. 11, 2001. Orcullo now checks passengers’ boarding passes before their carry-on items are inspected.

“We need decent wages, job security, health benefits, recognition of seniority rights, and respect,” Orcullo said, adding that the company keeps cutting workers’ hours and changing their shifts at the same time its management seeks to intimidate them.

“We are working one day, but don’t know about the next,” he said.

Aviation Security workers and Local 1877 members were joined by demonstrators from several other Service Employee locals, as well as from AFSCME, ILWU, Unite Here, ACORN, the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, Filipinos for Affirmative Action and others.

“People deserve fair pay,” said ACORN member Fannie Broom. “We’re here to make sure they get it.” Broom noted that some airport workers must hold two or even three jobs to make ends meet. “Some are single parents. They end up with no time for their families,” she said, adding that when workers don’t have health benefits, health problems become more severe and the state and county must ultimately pay for their care.

Pointing out that the Oakland Airport is a major employer in the city, Sharon Cornu, head of the Alameda County Central Labor Council, said that despite some recent gains by workers there, the airport is “still not acting as a responsible employer.”

“We’re calling on the Port Commission and the airport to act responsibly” toward their workers, she said.

“As politicians, we are always asked to bring in the dollars, to help with expansion, to make sure facilities are profitable and safe,” newly elected state Assemblymember Sandre Swanson told the rally. “We say that part of the partnership is that the workforce has to be taken care of. Everyone who is an elected official in this area supports this county as a workers’ county.”

“We will stand with you every time,” he said. “Your struggle is our struggle.”

mbechtel @ pww.org

Play reveals struggles of South Asian women

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 09:57:00 +0000

THEATER REVIEW

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — In response to Eve Enseler’s feminist “Vagina Monologues,” a series of theatrical vignettes on the theme of contemporary women’s gender and social oppression, South Asian Sisters, a California-based group, developed “Yoni Ki Baat” (“Talks of the Vagina”).

“Yoni Ki Baat” highlights the experiences of South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi) women in the contemporary U.S. Over the last few years, the theater piece has been widely performed in university and community settings, with various groups of South Asian women adding their own experiences to the theatrical mix.

The South Asian Women’s Collective of Rutgers University presented a spirited version of “Yoni Ki Baat” at Trayes Hall, Douglass College Center, on Oct. 28. Andolan, a New York-based group that fights for the rights and welfare of superexploited South Asian workers, made a significant contribution to the performance.

Together they gave the performance a special character — an alliance of students and workers. The students are fighting to make sense of a society where anything goes if you have the right credit card and skin color. The workers are struggling against brutal forms of indentured servitude, often at the hands of fellow South Asians who have brought them here with work permits and the lure of a better life, yet who keep them captive as domestic servants and household workers.

The characters in the play speak their bitterness and then disappear and sometimes are brought back to continue their story.

Translators repeat the stories of the real women from the Andolan group — stories that remind me of U.S. abolitionist slave narratives. The women have their passports held by the families who employ them, work for the families as long as the families demand, and are paid what the families decide upon. Sometimes they are beaten. Always they are humiliated.

One woman has soiled diapers thrown in her face when she fails to take care of a child in time. Another lies unconscious for three hours after she is struck down, only to be assisted by a doctor in the building who recommends that her employers (“owners” might be a better term) take her to the hospital. She is never taken to a hospital.

These women have neither the choices nor the specific frustrations of their middle-class sisters. Some escape and are helped by Andolan and other organizations in much the same way that runaway slaves in the U.S. were helped by abolitionist societies. In spite of what they have experienced, these women have maintained their dignity and their commitment to fight to free themselves and those who face similar conditions.

Supporting groups like Andolan and actively demanding that labor laws in the U.S. be both strengthened and enforced to end these conditions for workers should be a high priority for the general labor movement and all progressive organizations. If this is the “free labor market” offered by 21st-century “globalization,” it bears a striking resemblance to the slavery and wage slavery that enriched 19th-century “laissez-faire” capitalism.

The personal problems posed by the vignettes of middle-class women can’t be so easily addressed by labor law and social policy. The problems of hatred and self-hatred, of living in a society where the barriers are like a house of mirrors and windows (where you are always bumping into glass when you think that you can safely move from one place to another), can only be solved by long-term social and cultural pluralism.

Such pluralism is one in which the cultures of immigrant nationalities become part of a larger growing American culture — in short, a community within a larger community — in an atmosphere of mutual respect, rather than a ghetto characterized by some combination of defiance and self-hatred, which ghettoes always are.

The experiences highlighted in “Yoni Ki Baat” — a student angry at her boyfriend for dating a “white girl” and “betraying” his people, a middle-class Pakistani schoolgirl told by her middle-class mother not to play with a sweeper’s daughter, and a college student told by her Indian father never to tell her eventual husband that she has had sex with another man (and a non-Indian at that) whom she has no intentions of marrying — can’t be solved by legislation and regulation. They can be addressed, though, in and through a society that provides greater social and economic security for people of all backgrounds and encourages and rewards social cooperation, rather than individual and group competition.

By raising important issues for South Asians and many others, “Yoni Ki Baat” contributes to the social forces that work for such a society. Those interested in the campaign to help free new “indentured servants” and low-income South Asian workers can visit www.andolan.net for further information and ongoing activities.

Goodyear workers strike for safety, jobs, health care

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 06:58:00 +0000

As the holiday season approaches, 15,000 workers at Goodyear plants in 10 U.S. states and three Canadian cities, members of the United Steelworkers, walk the picket lines, as the union ramps up a national solidarity campaign.

The workers had watched as the world’s largest tire corporation increased the value of its stock 500 percent and enjoyed 2005 profits of $489 million. Then they saw Goodyear decide to rob retired rubber workers of their health care, slash wages by 40 percent and close its Tyler, Texas, plant, destroying 1,100 jobs and placing thousands of motorists at risk by getting rid of skilled union tire makers.

With no movement from Goodyear at the bargaining table, the workers voted to strike Oct. 5, and have been on the picket lines ever since.

“They picked the wrong fight with the wrong union at the wrong time,” USW President Leo Gerard told reporters in Akron, Ohio, during a union solidarity rally. “There’s a deep, deep, deep sense of betrayal amongst our members. I think there’s a public sense of betrayal in communities where our members work and live with their families. And I think when we tell the public the story, that sense of betrayal is going to expand.”

The story of that betrayal dates back to 2003, when the workers granted Goodyear massive concessions and agreed to close a plant to protect job security, living standards and retiree health care and pensions. This Oct. 30, after running scab ads in many local newspapers, Goodyear got local county sheriffs to usher “replacement workers” into the plants. The USW workers’ anger exploded into mass picketing at the gates. That same day, Goodyear gave the union formal notice of the Tyler closing.

Goodyear is using a billion-dollar line of credit to pay for its strike costs, but insists that it can’t afford $50 million to retool and keep the Tyler plant open. However Jim Wansley, president of USW Local 746 at Tyler, says, “Our people have become more and more determined.” Wansley told GlobalTireNews, an industry publication, “The only way they’ll close the plant is if they whip the whole Steelworkers organization. Nobody ever won anything by retreating.”

In Danville, Va., hundreds of members of USW Local 831 massed at the Goodyear gates at the crack of dawn Oct. 30. They lined the streets screaming “scab” as replacement workers, flanked by scores of police, drove through the picket line. At quitting time, hundreds of union workers “greeted” the departing scabs, even louder, local media reported. Local 831 Vice President Terry Trull said the union would be there every day.

Union rubber workers are angry about the scabs, but they’re also concerned about safety, both for workers and the public.

Local 831 member Bobby Bryant said the “replacement workers” risk severe injury because they do not know how to operate the machinery.

The USW says drivers are at risk too. The union cites a Princeton University study that linked the use of scabs with production of defective tires. It looked at the 2000 recall of 14.4 million tires by Firestone and Ford following the bitter Bridgestone-Firestone strike in which the corporation used “replacement workers.” The National Highway Safety Transportation Administration concluded that 271 deaths and 800 injuries resulted from defective Bridgestone-Firestone tires produced during the strike.

The strikers are reaching out for support from the entire 850,000-member USW, as well as other unions, churches and communities across the country. On Nov.18, scores of picket lines and rallies were staged at Goodyear dealerships urging customers to reconsider buying Goodyear tires.

The United Mine Workers union was among the first to answer the call. “Our USW brothers and sisters working at Goodyear are standing up for good jobs and a dignified retirement not just for themselves but for every American worker,” said UMWA President Cecil Roberts. “We in the UMWA know what it means for companies to make promises to workers then try to go back on their word. It’s an all too familiar pattern of corporate behavior in this day and age. But that does not make it right and we’re proud to stand with the USW to let this multinational corporation know that they cannot treat American workers with such disregard.”

The USW is making use of a new weapon: You Tube. The union’s Goodyear Alert web page (www.usw.org) features several powerful You Tube videos and a radio spot ad. After viewing one of the videos, Jerry Laycak wrote in the Comments section, “If corporate America has already forgotten about the ‘clout’ shown by organized labor on Nov. 7, then shame on them!”

Another viewer wrote, “I support Goodyear union members. I worked for Continental Tire in Charlotte, N.C., for 28 years. My father and my father-in-law are both retirees from Continental Tire in Charlotte, and Continental Tire is trying to do the same thing there.” The writer continued, “The American people should wake up. As goes the union, so goes the rest of working America.”

dwinebr696 @ aol.com

Houston janitors score big victory

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 06:38:00 +0000

HOUSTON — Nationwide pressure — everything from pending strikes elsewhere to a strong statement from a key U.S. senator — plus images of Houston’s mounted police beating and arresting unarmed janitors forced this city’s top cleaning firms to bargain and finally give striking janitors here a big win on Nov. 20.

The tentative contract increases wages from $5.30 to $7.75 an hour over three years, plus more hours. Included in the pact is health care coverage, provided for the first time. The pact includes two weeks paid vacation per year and six paid holidays. There is also a grievance procedure in place and all striking workers will get their jobs back with no disciplinary actions.

The service employees union represents 5,300 janitors in the Houston area. About 1,700 workers participated in the strike.

“This is an incredible victory for our families and for all families,” said Ercilia Sandoval, a union janitor. “When I go back to work, I will go back proud of what we have accomplished, not just for us and our families, but for all of the workers in this city who work very hard but are paid very little. We showed what can be done, what must be done to make America a better place.”

Flora Aguilar, a member of the SEIU bargaining committee, addressed his co-workers gathered at the convention center, Nov. 20, “Nobody thought that poor Latinos of Houston would be successful, but today we can stand up and carry our heads very high. We all won today.”

Before the pact, janitors working for the cleaning firms that hired them to take care of Houston’s office buildings earned an average of $20 a day for a five-day week.

Keys to the contract, besides the citywide mobilization, were nationwide support and images of mounted Houston police beating and arresting janitors during a Nov. 16 demonstration. Four janitors, including one 83-year-old who was taken to a hospital by ambulance, were injured and 44 arrested. SEIU janitors in other cities where the cleaning firms handle buildings put the firms — and the building owners — on notice that janitors elsewhere could mount strikes on behalf of their Houston colleagues.

The janitors also drew notice by marching on Chevron’s Houston headquarters, saying the city’s dominant landlord and biggest oil company should weigh in on behalf of the underpaid workers who clean its buildings. That march prompted support from incoming Senate Labor Committee Chairman Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

On the day before the strike settlement, the AFL-CIO-affiliated Labor Council for Latin American Advancement held a food drive near Harris County AFL-CIO headquarters in an act of solidarity with the striking janitors. The food drive was called by Angela Mejia, president of Texas LCLAA.

The strike started on Oct. 23 and was very difficult since the employers fought back hard. SEIU employed a wide range of tactics, including rallies, picket lines, prayer vigils, marches, acts of civil disobedience and lawsuits.

Janitors from around the country came to Houston to join the strike. Javier Morillo, president of SEIU Local 26 in Minneapolis, as well as SEIU President Andrew Stern joined the strikers.

LabourStart, a UK-based international labor web site, mounted an e-mail campaign focused on the CEO of Chevron. Congressmen John Lewis and Al Green and organizations including Harris County AFL-CIO, Houston NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference supported the strike.

The local union said in a Nov. 21 statement, “The increase in wages and hours will lift many families out of poverty, and provide janitors and their families with a steppingstone into the middle class while the health insurance will ensure workers have access to affordable health care.”

The SEIU said the janitors’ success in Houston will also show other workers in the mostly anti-union South the value of organizing and unionizing.

phill2 @ houston.rr.com

Mark Gruenberg of PAI contributed to this story.

Labor summit launches drive to fulfill voter mandate

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 06:21:00 +0000

News Analysis

Folks were still eating turkey sandwiches when the AFL-CIO issued its call for a Dec. 8-9 labor summit and march in Washington, D.C., to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, a top legislative priority for labor. Among the summit’s goals is training 250,000 “trusted messengers,” worksite-based labor activists, to force veto-proof enactment of EFCA.

It is an unprecedented move by labor, just days after a national election, to launch a grassroots organizing initiative to guarantee the voters’ mandate becomes a legislative reality.

The labor summit and march, timed to coincide with International Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, will build on the Nov. 7 election victory to push “with renewed vigor, resolve and hope that we can restore fundamental workers’ rights in America,” AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff said in a Nov. 28 statement.

EFCA would amend the National Labor Relations Act to allow workers to form unions by simply signing a card or petition, impose real penalties on employers who violate the law, and allow for arbitration to settle first contract disputes. The labor federation sees the measure as “the first major step” to restore workers’ rights, Acuff said. Change to Win unions also plan to push on EFCA.

“The stunning victory of Democratic congressional candidates created a pro-worker and pro-worker-rights majority in the House of Representatives and a much more supportive Senate,” he noted. But the federation is not sitting back and waiting for the politicians.

The summit and other initiatives show workers and the broad progressive movements are swinging into action, to translate ballots into decisive congressional action on Iraq, civil rights, economic justice and democracy.

• United for Peace and Justice, the national peace coalition, will deliver voters’ demands to end the Iraq war to the newly elected Congress, Jan. 27.

• The NAACP and a host of civil rights organizations launched a grassroots campaign Nov. 29 for passage of the End Racial Profiling Act. The goal is passage before the current Congress goes home for the holidays, but the bill is expected to be re-introduced next year.

• MoveOn.org, with 3 million online members, is organizing grassroots meetings Dec. 5 to kickoff its Mandate for Change campaign to press Congress on health care, clean energy, an Iraq exit strategy and restoring constitutional freedoms.

These and other groups, along with Democrats, are focusing now on the first 100 hours of the new Congress.

At a Nov. 28 meeting with aides to House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), union leaders and progressives mapped out a broad, unified lobbying push to promote Pelosi’s 100-legislative-hour agenda.

AFL-CIO, AFSCME, the Service Employees International Union, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers and a slew of progressive groups — including USAction, ACORN, Campaign for America’s Future, and MoveOn.org — attended the meeting, The Hill reported.

The 100-hour agenda includes ethics reform; enacting security recommendations of the bipartisan 9/11 commission; raising the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour; cutting student loan interest rates in half; allowing the government to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices for Medicare patients, and broadening the types of stem cell research allowed with federal funds.

AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill Samuel estimated that the first 100 legislative hours of the new Congress will span about two weeks. The various labor and progressive groups will then begin to pursue their individual legislative goals.

“The 100 hours’ agenda is really stuff that can be done quickly and have popular support and is not terribly complicated,” said Samuel. “It’s a down payment, there’s a much larger agenda.”

Congress has to tackle big economic issues related to wages, retirement security, and health care, he noted. That’s where differences, based on class, have emerged.

On one side of the Democratic kitchen table is Shared Prosperity, comprised of unions, progressive groups and the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal economic research group with an agenda to achieve universal health care and expand Social Security to offset corporate attacks on the private pension system.

Across the table is the Hamilton Project, composed of the Democratic Party’s largest corporate donors. It’s headed by Robert Rubin, chairman of Citigroup’s executive committee and former Clinton treasury secretary, who disagrees.

International Association of Machinists union spokesman Rick Sloan summed up the differences: “When the wizards of Wall Street start dictating Democratic [Party] policy, the first to be forgotten are the Democratic voters who made these election successes possible,” he said. “We get screwed every time these guys grab the handles of power. They forget the need to create jobs.”

Round-table meetings are being held to hash out agreement on an economic agenda. Trade issues were at the heart of the first of a series of meetings between Sweeney and Rubin. Sweeney said the initial discussion was “cordial,” but it’s “tough to be tough and nice.” The next meeting will include union presidents and will have health care on the agenda.

dwinebr696 @ aol.com