People Before Profit blog

Kennedy challenges Smithfield, Homeland Security

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 08:20:00 +0000

The firing of workers trying to unionize at the Smithfield meat packing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., has prompted Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) to take aim at the Department of Homeland Security. The senator has urged the department to suspend its regulations that allow the government to check the Social Security numbers of workers the numbers it has on its master lists.

Kennedy, who chairs the Senate’s Department of Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, delivered a letter this week to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chernoff asking that the department’s controversial IMAGE program, as it is called, be held “in abeyance” until it can be reviewed by Congress.

Pointing to Smithfield’s cooperation with Homeland Security’s IMAGE program, Kennedy wrote that the company used the program to fire workers without giving them adequate time to respond to questions about mismatched information.

The government raided the Smithfield plant several weeks ago, arresting 21 workers on immigration charges.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union has worked for 14 years to organize the plant, which slaughters 30,000 hogs a day.

The Homeland Security IMAGE program is being avoided by most companies but has been used to fire and arrest workers at Smithfield. Smithfield volunteered itself for the program once the national campaign to support workers trying to unionize got underway.

Several leaders of the organizing effort at Smithfield have received letters threatening them with job termination. The union has called for an end to arrests because Smithfield is using the arrests to threaten and intimidate workers who support the union.

The union points out that this is in violation even of the Department of Homeland Security’s own guidelines on worksite enforcement during labor disputes.

Gene Bruskin, director of the Smithfield Justice Campaign, called Kennedy’s move “an important step in stopping Smithfield from using its cooperation with IMAGE as a smokescreen to intimidate workers.”

“The company has been found in legal rulings to have illegally threatened workers who are advocating for better conditions with arrest by immigration authorities,” Bruskin said. “Now they are making good on those threats and using our immigration laws to intimidate workers.”

Kennedy called upon the secretary of Homeland Security not to issue any regulations regarding social security mismatches until Congress is able to complete action on comprehensive immigration reform.

In an “open letter” to the union, just before the move by Kennedy, Smithfield President Joe Luter asked for a union election, offering to help pay for a “neutral” outside observer to assure a fair vote.

The union dismissed the “offer,” saying the recent firings of immigrant workers have created an atmosphere of fear the company is using to its advantage.

“The company is using this as a public relations move,” said Mauricio Castro of the North Carolina Latino Coalition. “All of a sudden they’re talking about the opportunity to vote or hold elections. When you intimidate people or especially after these raids, what kind of a free election do you have?”

Yales hospital: Poster child for union-busting

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:36:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH) is 650 miles from the notorious anti-worker Smithfield Foods livestock processing factory in Tar Heel, N.C. On Smithfield’s killing floors and in New Haven’s healing wards, the workers have something in common. Their employers use illegal, anti-democratic union-busting tactics to deny a voice on the job.

In December 2006, the YNHH administration outraged workers, elected officials, clergy, the media and the entire community when they defied a conduct agreement and undermined a union election they were certain to lose. The hospital became the new poster child for why the Employee Free Choice Act (HR 800) is a top priority in the 110th Congress.

The case history

In 1973, the hospital’s 140 food service workers made history when they won union representation with New England Health Care Employees Union District 1199. For 34 years the dietary workers have fought hard to maintain modest wage and benefit increases, despite the fact that the remaining 1,800 service, maintenance and clerical workers at the hospital are unorganized.

“If it wasn’t for the food service workers all these years actively organizing, none of the wage increases or benefits would exist. Yale-New Haven Hospital would be the Wal-Mart of health care,” says Ray Milici, a chef with 45 years seniority who helped lead the original organizing drive.

When 2,600 clerical and technical workers at Yale University formed Local 34 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees union, HERE, and won a first union contract in 1984, joining 1,500 service and maintenance workers already organized in Local 35 HERE, hopes were high that the hospital workers would be next to win the right to a union.

Although they are legally separate, YNHH and Yale University have interlocking directorates and huge endowments. They are notoriously anti-union. Employees of Yale University at the medical school who are members of Local 34 often work side by side with employees of YNHH, doing the same job for better wages and benefits won in their union contract.

But, without the strength of a fully organized hospital, the ability of both the hospital’s dietary and the university’s union workers to win big improvements is limited.

Many hospital workers, unable to afford health care for themselves, hold down two or more jobs to make ends meet. Hospital worker Minnie DaCosta says she wants a union because she has had to rely on HUSKY, the state-funded health plan, to cover her children.

Nine years ago, Locals 34 and 35 joined with 1199 to form the Federation of Hospital and University Employees. By pooling resources, the unions hoped to organize the rest of the hospital.

Bosses create atmosphere of fear

YNHH immediately began utilizing all their resources to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. While claiming that good conditions at the hospital do not warrant the need for a union, they illegally arrested workers who distributed union literature to co-workers on their own time and barred union organizers from the public areas of the hospital.

The long organizing drive is a showcase of the uneven playing field. Management has had access to all of the workers, all of the time. When the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that management violated the law, there was no substantial penalty. Pro-union workers, on the other hand, faced discipline or loss of job if they tried to talk to their co-workers about the union.

In 2002, nearly 1,200 hospital workers courageously signed an appeal for card-check neutrality. They wanted the hospital to recognize the union if a majority of workers signed union cards. Around the country, when employers have agreed to card-check neutrality, workers have readily chosen to join unions and achieved significant gains.

The hospital insisted instead on a NLRB election process, including the right to challenge the results if the majority were to vote for the union. Employer challenges often take years to settle, during which time workers’ rights are denied.

Community and union join together

The surrounding New Haven community, majority African American and Latino, was hurting from the anti-worker policies of the city’s largest employer. As industrial jobs left town, Yale’s discriminatory hiring practices and aggressive expansion into working-class neighborhoods were destroying affordable housing, creating traffic and parking problems and degrading the environment. The needs of the community became closely intertwined with the status of workers’ rights at Yale.

A movement for a social contract emerged, with labor, clergy and grassroots leadership. The Connecticut Center for a New Economy and Community Organized for Responsible Development (CORD) issued studies, organized meetings and conferences and went door to door urging people to become involved. So much support was built up that the 30-member Board of Aldermen unanimously passed a Community Benefit Agreement resolution, requiring any large new development in the city to have neighborhood input.

When the hospital announced plans to build a $430 million cancer center, CORD insisted that in order to get zoning approval the hospital must agree to the Community Benefit Agreement covering card-check neutrality, hiring and training of workers who live in New Haven, and neighborhood needs, including youth services and health care.

The hospital tried to ignore CORD, but after months of demonstrations, stormy hearings and public pressure, a compromise was reached. The hospital agreed to a hybrid election process conducted by the NLRB with an independent arbitrator replacing the normal lengthy appeals process.

A code of conduct was signed which allowed union organizers access to non-work areas in the hospital and prohibited the administration from harassment and captive audience meetings. The hospital also agreed to community demands for jobs, training and neighborhood programs.

Workers’ power in action

The Federation of Hospital and University Employees built a strong organizing committee based on rank-and-file workers. Members of Local 34 and 35 and 1199 food service workers acted as volunteer organizers. Within a few months, over half the eligible hospital workers had signed union cards.

The union had to struggle against misinformation and distortion spread by management. One management flyer listed recent improvements in benefits. Next to each was a big question mark, implying that with a union, workers could lose what they already have. Anti-union workers, solicited by management, relied on national anti-union web sites and organizations.

Alongside the negative attacks, YNHH gave out bonuses — wage increases of up to $2 an hour, a program to help first-time home buyers and hospital-wide monthly birthday parties.

Despite the hospital’s tactics, a majority of workers signed union cards. The union filed for an NLRB election, which was set for last Dec. 21-22. The workers were determined to win.

Sammy Reyes, a diagnostic radiology associate, told his co-workers at an organizing meeting that he would not stop. “The hospital moved me around to different locations to keep me from trying to organize my co-workers,” he said, “but having a union means we will have a voice on our jobs.”

The workers continued to garner more community support. New Haven Black and Latino clergy were among the longtime supporters of workers’ rights at the hospital. Now Catholic clergy, representing many of the mostly white workers from the suburbs, signed a statement of support. This created the conditions for strengthening the unity of all sections of the workforce in support of the union. The hospital responded with escalated pressure on the Catholic clergy and workers.

Hospital management pushes class war

Under CEO Marna Borgstrom, YNHH stepped up violations of the Community Benefit Agreement. Management held meetings with all supervisors to coordinate an escalated anti-union campaign. Supervisors held one-on-one meetings with workers. They falsely claimed that a union contract would not allow supervisors to give time off to go to the doctor or attend to other emergencies. They threatened that benefits would be cut and job security would be eliminated.

To get around the fact that management was prohibited by the fair election agreement from forcing workers to attend anti-union meetings, supervisors scheduled compulsory meetings to discuss department business. After a few minutes, they would announce that they were going to talk about the union. Workers were now “free” to leave, but anyone who did would be fingered as a union supporter.

In this atmosphere, members of Locals 34 and 35 and 1199 food service workers showed consistent courage and determination.

A noontime rally of Local 34 members heard that YNHH supervisors were meeting in a nearby university building to plan anti-union strategy. Over 100 Local 34 members marched into the meeting room, holding signs and singing union songs. After a few minutes, the supervisors had to give up and walk out.

On a daily basis, food service workers, proudly wearing their 1199 union buttons, refused to be intimidated. They spent their breaks in the cafeteria and lobby talking to other workers about their own positive experience as union members.

But after two weeks of all-out war by YNHH management, enough workers had been bullied, intimidated, isolated and lied-to that the union concluded there could no longer be a fair election. By deliberately creating an atmosphere of polarization and fear, management had “poisoned the well.”

The union appealed to the arbitrator overseeing the Community Benefit Agreement, Margaret Kern. On Dec. 13, after hearing the evidence, Kern ruled in favor of the union’s request to indefinitely postpone the election because “the employer has engaged in serious violations of federal law, the election principles agreement, and prior arbitration awards.” The hospital had succeeded in subverting the democratic process.

Storm of protest

The hospital’s actions created a storm of protest. The anti-union New Haven Register editorially blasted the hospital for its conduct, as did Yale University President Richard Levin, who sits on the hospital board. State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal called for the hospital to abide by card-check neutrality. The mayor and Board of Aldermen are considering what actions they will take.

Instead of starting out the new year by negotiating their first contract, hospital workers remain stuck without adequate pay or respect, while CEO Borgstrom, who wrote her master’s thesis on union-busting techniques for hospitals, continues to enjoy her $1-million-plus salary.

Employee Free Choice needed

YNHH was able to prevent December’s union election. But six weeks earlier, another election took place. The American people spoke plainly for a change in Washington away from pro-corporate policies.

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, whose district includes New Haven, said of the hospital’s actions, “This proves that now more than ever we need to pass into law initiatives such as the Employee Free Choice Act, which would establish a system of ‘card-check neutrality’ and give workers a fair chance to decide to organize for themselves free from intimidation and coercion.”

The future of workers at YNHH and at Smithfield, along with the communities where they are located, are bound together in this great battle to guarantee the human right to union representation.

Even as the struggle to organize the hospital continues in New Haven, the campaign for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act has begun in the halls of Congress.

Instead of sitting down at the bargaining table with 2,000 newly organized members, Ray Milici and his brothers and sisters are once again bargaining on behalf of 140 dietary workers, as their contract runs out. “We’ll just have to wait a little longer,” said Milici. “In the end, it’s truth to power and we will win.”

Art Perlo is active in union support at Yale. Joelle Fishman is chair of the Connecticut Communist Party.

Dr. King showed worker rights are civil rights

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:20:00 +0000

The following is excerpted from the remarks of Roger Toussaint, president of New York City’s Transport Workers Union Local 100, on the occasion of its Martin Luther King Jr. Day commemoration, Jan. 15.

Today is a special celebration for Local 100, the federal holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

For us, today is the answer to the question that people in Montgomery, Ala., posed to Dr. King in 1965: How long? He told them the road is long and hard. But it takes you where we have to go. Just months later, Congress passed the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Today, New York City Transit rejoins the United States of America. Today, Dr. King’s birthday is a holiday in transit. Transit waited 23 years after Reagan signed it into federal law. Transit waited six years after every one of the 50 states made it a holiday. Transit even waited a year after the last county in America, Greenville County, S.C., made it a holiday.

How long? Too long. But we finally did it.

Does history matter?

Dr. King knew that just because you were born Black, you didn’t automatically know about a history of struggle. You had to learn it.

We have all seen that just because you joined Local 100, that doesn’t automatically mean you know about the history of struggle of our union. You have to learn it. The future of our union depends on it.

Would we be celebrating Dr. King if he was not killed in 1968? But Memphis happened. King’s death is etched in our memory. And that is where I would like to begin.

Memphis showed the intersection of civil rights and workers’ rights. Dr. King was in Memphis in early 1968 because of a strike by African American workers. These public workers took care of Memphis’ garbage. And in return, Memphis treated them like garbage. Their wages were atrocious. There were no benefits, no vacation and no pension.

On Jan. 31, 1968, it rained. Black sewer workers were sent home without pay. The next day, Feb. 1, the cold rain continued. There were no indoor facilities for Black sanitation workers. Two of them sat inside the back of a garbage truck to stay dry. Old and poorly maintained, an electrical short in its wiring caused the compressor to start running. Echol Cole and Robert Walker were crushed to death. Ten days later the union held a mass meeting, where the members voted to strike. The slogan of the Memphis strike was a simple one. The slogan was: “I am a man.” The Memphis strike was a strike for dignity — dignity as African Americans and dignity as workers.

Dr. King understood the close connection between the African American struggle and the struggle of labor. “Negroes are almost entirely a working people,” he said. “Our needs are identical with labor’s needs.” The mayor of Memphis told one and all that the strike was “illegal.” I don’t know if he called the strikers “thugs,” but he might have.

Dr. King had close ties with our union. To me, this is not a theme that grows old. [TWU founding president] Mike Quill and Dr. King were drawn together naturally, two fighters for dignity for all who labor, two fighters against any form of discrimination.

That’s not history. It’s our lifeblood, our inheritance. It made us what we are.

A time to break silence on Iraq

Tonight we distributed Dr. King’s address on the Vietnam War. Forty years ago, America was at war in Vietnam. At home, African Americans were also in battle against the last vestiges of legal segregation in the South and against discrimination everywhere. This was the backdrop for Dr. King’s speech just a few miles from here, at Riverside Church.

He had to wrestle with a serious moral and political issue. Opposition to discrimination was a broadly held sentiment. In 1967, opposition to the war in Vietnam was nowhere near as broad among the political establishment or within the faith community. Dr. King was under great pressure to tone down his antiwar statements, similar to the pressure to stop confronting legal segregation in Birmingham, Ala., a few years earlier. His answer then was the famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In 1967, it was “Beyond Vietnam, A Time to Break Silence.”

Permit me a brief reflection on how to handle challenges. I think this is one of the key lessons to be learned from the life of Dr. King.

In Birmingham, King was challenged: retreat or advance. King pushed ahead.

In 1967, King was challenged on the war. He pushed ahead.

I think our union is being challenged as well. Our [December 2005] strike pushed the envelope for New York City unions, and maybe even beyond. There were those who counseled retreat. There were those who counseled repudiating December and those who led you onto the battlefield. But we had to face the challenge, even in the face of fines and threats and jails. I am proud that we did.

I don’t think the challenges are past. Each of us will be judged on how we answer, just as Dr. King was.

King did not live to see the end of the war in Vietnam. Just one year later he would be murdered in Memphis. Dr. King’s remarks should call each of us to break our silence on the war in Iraq.

George Bush calls for a “surge” in Iraq. It will be a surge in death. A surge in suffering. A surge in public money wasted and lives destroyed. Dr. King’s analysis of Vietnam rings true today. We do not belong in Iraq. We need a surge in opposition to the war. That is the way to honor Dr. King.

History still to be written

In a world where our own government often seems to have lost sight of reason and of the opinions of most of humankind, we need to keep the dream alive. In a world where enormous pressure is threatening to erode the achievements of Dr. King’s generation and of the prior generation that built the labor movement in the United States, we need to keep the dream alive. In a world where the basic fight for human dignity is still on the agenda, we need to keep the dream alive.

Dr. King is not just history. His dream is the history we have not yet written.

Profits up, but Chrysler cuts

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 06:55:00 +0000

FENTON, Mo. — An autoworker who is a member of the Missouri Legislature says Chrysler’s announcement that it is gutting 1,300 jobs from its South Assembly Plant here has “more to do with the bargaining climate than with the car sales.”

State Rep. John Bowman (D-St. Louis), a 30-year United Auto Workers union member from the Fenton plant, says that with the union engaged in national contract negotiations this year, the automaker wants “to get rid of high-seniority workers through attrition, buyouts and layoffs.”

Chrysler’s announcement laid out a three-year restructuring plan that will eliminate 13,000 jobs nationwide by 2009. Chrysler stocks jumped $5.33 cents per share, to $69.78 after the cuts were announced.

The South Assembly Plant, which currently has two shifts, makes Chrysler minivans and employs about 2,300 people. It is about 20 miles southwest of St. Louis.

The auto giant says it lost $1.5 billion in revenue last year, but reports on earnings on shares tell a different story. Chrysler shares earned $4.26 billion, or $4.17 per share, in 2006, compared to $3.76 billion, or $3.70 per share, in 2005. In other words, Chrysler made around $760 million more in profits last year, compared to the year before.

Chrysler’s parent company, DaimlerChrysler, posted operating income of $7.28 billion last year, up from $6.84 billion in 2005. And former Chrysler Chairman Robert J. Eaton received a personal compensation deal worth $70 million when he sold Chrysler to the German auto manufacturer.

“These layoffs are horrible,” said Bowman. “What happened to Chrysler’s commitment to the state and local community?” he asked.

In December 2005, in exchange for tax breaks, Chrysler said it would invest $1 billion in its Fenton plants. Local community and political leaders have suggested that the tax breaks could be repealed.

The layoffs “will devastate the local economy,” Bowman told the World.

Missouri Progressive Vote Organizer Margarida Jorge cited Chrysler’s desire to push health care costs onto workers. “These layoffs also have a lot to do with our broken health care system,” she told the World. “If we had a national health care plan, like HR 676, Chrysler couldn’t use health care as a bargaining chip.”

Chrysler said it wants to cut its $2.3 billion annual health care bill before it begins contract negotiations with the UAW this spring. Current health care costs are passed on to consumers and, the company claims, add about $1,000 to the price of every new Chrysler car. Of course, cutting the company’s costs may help its profits picture, but observers agree that consumers are unlikely to see any drop in car prices.

Retired workers and their families account for two-thirds of Chrysler’s health care outlays. Toyota, Honda and Nissan, nonunion carmakers who are relative newcomers to the U.S. manufacturing scene, don’t have these “legacy costs.”

Chrysler’s restructuring plan includes increasing sales and manufacturing operations in countries in Europe and Asia. The existence of government health care plans in these countries significantly reduces auto production costs there. Chrysler is currently the fifth largest carmaker in the world. It sold 2.7 million vehicles last year, mostly in North America.

Chrysler has cut 40,000 jobs since 2001 and closed 16 plants. The current round of job cuts will affect plants in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Delaware, Missouri and Ontario, Canada.

tonypec @ cpusa.org

Falsehoods about immigrant workers

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 10:18:00 +0000

Historians call the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 a tragic part of our history. With this act, Chinese workers were denied citizenship. Despite the words on the Statue of Liberty and the principles of democracy, it remained in effect until 1943.

But unprincipled politicians continue to use fear and hatred as tactics to remain in power. The November elections unmasked many of them.

In its statement of support for the 2003 Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride, the AFL-CIO called for “(1) legalization, including the right of immigrant workers in the United States to live and work in this country and become its citizens; and (2) the right of immigrant workers to unite their families in the United States if they wish.” In a Nov. 16, 2004, speech at Columbia University, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney noted that immigrant workers — documented as well as undocumented — are disproportionately represented in dangerous industries such as construction, manufacturing and agriculture.

“It is shameful,” he said, “that in 2002, foreign-born workers suffered 69 percent of the workplace fatalities in our country, even though they make up just 15 percent of our workforce.” He called for “a rational and fair immigration policy that respects the rights of all workers; we need a path to full citizenship for workers who’ve been contributing so much to our nation.”

Opponents of immigrant rights claim that the undocumented cause low wages, unemployment and shortages in government services. These charges are both false and hurtful to all workers.

These arguments fail to address several important points. Employers use nonunion work to depress wages, whether the nonunion worker is an immigrant or not. In fact, immigrants have a much higher percentage of trade union membership than U.S.-born workers — the percentage for all nonwhite workers is also higher than the percentage for white workers.

Undocumented immigrants have legal problems that most other workers do not have. Many lose their jobs because of their undocumented status. When they are forced to work in nonunion jobs, employers do use their lower income to depress wages. However, deportation and walls are not a solution to maintaining and raising wage rates. Strikes and negotiations raise wages. A path to citizenship for undocumented workers and their families would further trade union unity and strengthen unions; deportation would weaken the labor movement. If we are sincerely interested in the wages of U.S. workers, citizenship and trade union membership would be an immediate solution.

It is not undocumented workers who plan for the economy to run at less than full capacity. Undocumented workers do not promote layoffs. Undocumented workers do not oppose extensions of unemployment insurance, civil rights, public works and legislation to stop runaway shops. Undocumented workers do not stand in the way of minimum wage increases, strengthened labor standards and OSHA enforcement. Nor are they responsible for policies like NAFTA and other “free trade” agreements that rob workers in other countries of their livelihoods. However, those same policies, which harm immigrants and also depress the standards for our country’s native-born workers, are the very policies of the Bush administration.

The U.S. Department of Labor projects that between 1998 and 2008, the number of jobs will have increased by 20 million, but the number of workers will have increased by just 17 million. Our economy needs 500,000 new workers each year and is constantly searching for workers. U.S. layoffs are primarily caused by corporate downsizing and capital flight to other countries where wages are lower.

Immigrants add about $10 billion each year to the U.S. economy. That does not include the additional contribution of immigrant-owned businesses or the impact of highly skilled immigrants on overall productivity.

The total net benefit (taxes paid over benefits received) to the Social Security system in today’s dollars from continuing current levels of immigration is predicted as nearly $500 billion for the 1998-2022 period and nearly $2 trillion through 2072.

However, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for most social programs such as welfare, food stamps, Medicaid and disability protection. Except for pre-natal care, they are deprived of government-provided medical treatment, except in emergencies. Undocumented workers contribute to the well-being of citizens but do not qualify for the entitlements that they work to support.

U.S. global economic and military policies enrich Wall Street but are responsible for lowering the standard of living and damaging the stability of poor and less developed countries. That causes increased pressure on people in these countries to immigrate to wealthier nations like the U.S. in an attempt to support their families. When workers do make the arduous trip to come here and contribute to our nation’s economy, offering citizenship would be an act of justice.

Lou Incognito is a retiree and social justice activist in Philadelphia.

Black history events to honor union leader

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 07:17:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Progressives in Connecticut will celebrate African American History Month by commemorating one of the state’s most outstanding fighters for economic and social justice and peace. Activists will come together to carry on the legacy of George C. Springer Sr., a unity builder, teacher, union leader and activist who died in December at age 74.

Springer, Northeast regional director of the American Federation of Teachers, was a remarkable leader and mentor, whose courage and commitment raised the level of struggle for equality in the state and nation.

Organized around the theme of “We Will Not Be Silent,” the celebrations will also honor the historic speech delivered 40 years ago by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Riverside Church in New York City. King courageously spoke out against the war in Vietnam. He joined together the civil rights, peace and labor movements against the evils of racism, poverty and war, opening a new level of unity that was key to ending the war.

The events will highlight the need for broad unity to end the war in Iraq and to achieve economic and social progress toward equality in the 110th Congress. The program will include guest speakers, reflections, cultural presentations, a call to action and refreshments. Both events will benefit the People’s Weekly World newspaper.

A Hartford event will be held on Saturday, Feb. 24, at 6:30 p.m. at La Paloma Saberna Coffeehouse, 405 Capitol Avenue. A New Haven event will be held on Sunday, Feb. 25, at 4 p.m. at the New Haven People’s Center, 37 Howe Street.

Springer learned early in life about exploitation, racism and colonialism, growing up in the Panama Canal Zone. His father was a laborer who helped dig the canal. This experience shaped Springer’s vision and conviction to struggle for a more just world.

He came to New Britain, Conn., to attend college and worked at the Stanley Works factory to pay his fees. After he obtained his degree, he taught African American history and graphic arts for 20 years, serving in the leadership of the New Britain Federation of Teachers, the New Britain NAACP and other community organizations.

In 1979 Springer was elected president of the American Federation of Teachers in Connecticut, a position he held for 22 years. During his tenure, the union’s membership grew from 11,000 teachers to 24,000 teachers, paraprofessionals, public employees, health care professionals and higher education faculty. He was a vice president of the national AFT from 1988 to 2001 and served on its executive committee for several years.

Springer also served in the leadership of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, the A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and on many boards and commissions. He was a founder and chair of the progressive political action committees LEAP in Connecticut and Northeast Action.

Upon retirement, he served for five years as Northeast regional director of the AFT. He attended many international conferences and served as a monitor in the historic 1994 South African elections, when Nelson Mandela was elected president.

Springer’s greatest passion took the form of concern for the condition and future of children. In 2000, he was a founder of the Coalition to End Child Poverty in Connecticut, which introduced state legislation that would have established an “end child poverty social investment fund” based on a surtax imposed on the highest income brackets.

He leaves behind his wife Gerri Brown-Springer, four children, 10 grandchildren and four great grandchildren.

For more information on the Connecticut tributes, call (203) 624-8664.

Time to pass Employee Free Choice

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 06:59:00 +0000

Workers pack halls of Congress to demand passage of right-to-organize bill

“I served my nation to protect the laws of our land, not companies like Smithfield that deprive us of those laws,” meatpacking worker Keith Ludlum told a packed congressional hearing last week.

The Employees Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would stop bosses like Smithfield from denying workers the right to organize, was reintroduced in Congress Feb. 8. The bill hit the street running with 232 co-sponsors, including seven Republicans. Supporters are pushing for a March 1 vote.

Following the bill’s introduction, the House Education and Labor Committee, under its new chair George Miller (D-Calif.), held a lively three-hour hearing with both sides lobbing verbal grenades.

Miller, lead House sponsor of EFCA, told a Feb. 6 press conference that leveling the playing field to let workers choose to join unions “is a basic and fundamental human right and a basic and fundamental civil right.”

The EFCA gives workers the right to form a union when a majority signs cards. Under its rules, the union must be recognized by the employer — the boss will no longer have effective veto power as is now the case. Current law allows the employer to insist on a drawn-out election process even after the majority of workers have signed cards.

“When I was fired, the supervisors and the deputy sheriff marched me out of the plant in front of all the other employees as an example to intimidate them,” testified Ludlum, who works in the livestock department at Smithfield’s giant pork processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C. Ludlum was fired in 1994 just before a vote on unionization that was narrowly defeated. He wasn’t reinstated until 2000. It took that long for the National Labor Relations Board to rule against the company despite a litany of charges.

The passionate testimony of workers and union representatives about the firings, intimidation, lying and stalling tactics used by employers to undermine the choice of workers to get a union follow the spirit of the historic La Follette hearings of the 1930s, which led to the enactment of the Wagner Act. That 1935 legislation paved the way for this country’s greatest surge of unionization.

In addition, the proposed law puts far stiffer penalties into place for the illegal tactics that companies have used to create “union-free” workplaces.

Passage of the law will not bar companies from campaigning against the union, said AFL-CIO Associate General Counsel Nancy Schiffer in opening testimony at the Feb. 8 hearing. However, she said, the card check system would help to “level” the workplace floor.

Schiffer laid out the case for changes in this country’s labor law.

Behind the growing inequity in wealth in our country is the decline in the number of union members, she charged. Even though the majority of Americans believe workers should have a choice to join a union, and even though 60 million workers who are not union members say they would like to join, the campaigns of intimidation by a $4 billion “union avoidance” industry have perverted the election process.

Schiffer, a former field attorney with the NLRB, charged that anti-union consultants are hired by employers in up to 82 percent of worker campaigns to form unions. Typical employer penalties under current law are posting notices or paying back pay. Back pay is calculated by subtracting other earnings during time off.

In 1969, the number of workers who suffered illegal retaliation for exercising their federal labor law rights was just over 6,000, said Schiffer. But by 2005, the NLRB’s annual report documented 31,358 workers who received back pay because of illegal employer discrimination — one worker every 17 minutes. In 2003, the average back pay was a mere $3,800. Schiffer called that a small price for an employer pay to keep the union out.

The EFCA also mandates mediation and arbitration for the first union contract. Even where workers overcome obstacles and vote in a union, the companies typically continue union-busting tactics by refusing to bargain. According to Ronald Meisburg, general counsel for the NLRB, meritorious NLRB charges alleging illegal refusals to bargain by employers are filed in 28 percent of all newly certified bargaining relationships.

As the bill moves to the full committee, the AFL-CIO, Change to Win and individual unions including Autoworkers, Teamsters, Steelworkers and Service Employees are mounting a full-court press to block what they say corporate America is doing to pervert the rights of workers to join a union. In addition to public hearings, full page newspaper ads, blogs and e-mail campaigns are being launched to fuel the outrage necessary to pass this legislation.

Nothing free and open about NLRB elections

In testimony before the House Labor and Education Committee, AFL-CIO Associate Counsel Nancy Schiffel tore apart the often-used analogy of the company and union competing for the worker’s vote as in an election of candidates for public office.

“If general political elections were run like NLRB elections,” she said, “only the incumbent office holder, and not the challenger, would have access to a list of registered voters and their home addresses. Only the incumbent, and not the challenger, would be able to talk to voters, in person, every single day.

“The challenger, meanwhile, would have to remain outside the boundaries of the state or district involved and try to meet voters by flagging them down as they drive past. The election would always be conducted in the incumbent candidate’s party offices, with voters escorted to the polls by the incumbent’s staff.

“And finally,” she said, “during the entire course of the campaign, the incumbent, but not the challenger, would have the sole authority and ability to electioneer among the voters at their place of employment, during the entire time they are working. Moreover, the incumbent could pull them off their jobs and make them attend one-sided electioneering meetings whenever it wanted. And the incumbent could fire voters who refused to attend mandatory meetings, or if they tried to leave the meeting, or even if they questioned what was being said.”

Another fast track to the unemployment line?

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:56:00 +0000

President seeks renewal of authority to move more jobs out of country

President Bush has asked Congress for approval of “fast track” authority. Fast track means that the president negotiates a trade agreement and Congress cannot make any changes in it; they can only vote it up or down. For most workers, fast track is the code word for giving the capitalists the opportunity to move more jobs out of the country.

Sins of NAFTA and CAFTA

With Congress back in the hands of Democrats, workers are expecting them to make up for the sins of NAFTA and CAFTA. The AFL-CIO has issued a statement saying, “Extending fast track authority would hamstring Congress’s ability to fix our broken trade policy at a time when working families are in dire need of a correction in course.”

The AFL-CIO’s statement says it all, but being the realists they and workers are, they go on to spell it out, “Any agreement that gets the expedited consideration and an up-or-down vote included in fast track must include enforceable core international worker rights and enforceable environmental standards.” The federation insisted that such an agreement also include rules on investment, government procurement, intellectual property rights and services “that strike the right balance between democratic accountability, development concerns and international obligations.”

The AFL-CIO statement goes on to call for Congress to be let into the negotiations instead of just being handed the agreement. Fast-track authority ends in June and without it, the president will no longer have the ability to negotiate trade agreements and then send them to Congress for an up-or-down vote. A denial of fast track would squelch a new trade agreement Bush is nearing completion with the World Trade Organization. Under the terms of this new agreement, the U.S. would agree to reduce its farm subsidies in exchange for the European Union reducing tariffs on their farm goods.

This agreement will be very controversial both here and abroad. The recent U.S.-Mexico Binational Family Farmer and Farmworker Congress issued an emphatic call to get “free trade” rules out of agriculture. Bush administration officials say they cannot conclude these trade negotiations before the current fast track authority runs out.

Encouraging words

Workers listening to the Democratic response to Bush’s State of the Union speech heard some encouraging words from freshman Senator Jim Webb of Virginia. Webb, a critic of free trade agreements, said, “Our manufacturing base is being dismantled and sent overseas.” Workers “expect, rightly, that in this age of globalization, their government has a duty to insist that their concerns be dealt with fairly in the international marketplace,” he added.

Backing up the AFL-CIO call for international worker rights was a statement released by a delegation of 12 international unions led by the International Trade Union Confederation at the conclusion of the gathering of the world’s political and economic elite at the recent World Economic Forum.

‘Decent work’ initiative

The “Decent Work for a Decent Life” statement issued by the 12 unions launched an international campaign to place what it calls “decent work” at the core of national and international development, trade, financial and social policies. The decent work concept covers “equal access to employment, living wages, social protection and freedom from exploitation and union rights.”

The campaign brings together the ITUC, European TUC, Global Progressive Forum, SOLIDAR and Social Alert. The ITUC is an international labor federation that was founded on Nov. 1 of last year with the dissolution of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. It represents 168 million workers in 153 countries and territories.

Paul S. Kaczocha works as a millwright at a steel plant in Burns Harbor, Ind. He has been a USW member for 38 years.

Jury exonerates Seattle WTO protesters

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:53:00 +0000

SEATTLE (PAI) — It took seven years, but 147 of the Seattle protesters against corporate-centered globalization finally won — in federal court.

On Jan. 30, a federal district court jury ruled the city’s mass arrest of peaceful protesters in Westlake Park in 1999 was unconstitutional. The lead protester in the class action suit was Kenneth Hankin, a worker at Boeing Aircraft. City attorneys vowed to appeal. The suit did not cover the few protesters who destroyed property and smashed windows.

The peaceful protesters in the park, like the 50,000 others who came to on Seattle in late 1999, were challenging the policies of the World Trade Organization, whose leaders, including President Bill Clinton, were meeting there.

The peaceful demonstrators in Seattle, led by many U.S. union leaders, contended the WTO’s trade policies harm workers, the environment, communities, unions and native peoples worldwide.

The protests were also notable as a key instance where unions and environmental groups joined together in a common cause. Machinists District 751 members served as marshals, but none were involved in the class action suit, as far as the union knows.

The jurors decided the police made the arrests without probable cause and ruled that officers did not warn protesters to clear the park first. Lawyers for the protesters argued that Seattle had a policy of targeting the protesters for their views, and that arrests due to such targeting violate the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment’s protection of people against improper search and seizure.

Republicans delay minimum wage hike

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:22:00 +0000

The Senate voted 94-3 last week to increase the federal minimum wage to $7.25 over two years from the current $5.15 per hour, but in a maneuver by Republicans it tied the hike to corporate tax breaks and delayed passage of the bill into law.

The Senate vote came on the heels of passage of the wage hike by the House in a “clean” bill that simply raised the minimum wage.

The wage increase, if it becomes law, will be the first in 10 years and will represent a victory for Democrats and the labor movement, who made it a key plank in the midterm election campaign that resulted in loss by the Republican ultra-right of both houses of Congress.

The huge margin notwithstanding, several roadblocks put up by the Republicans must now be cleared before the measure becomes law. The immediate result of the Republican moves is that Democratic leaders in the Senate are potentially now in conflict with Democratic leaders in the House who passed the “clean” bill.

Democratic leaders in the Senate say they cannot get the Republican support they need without adding the corporate tax breaks.

That has forced Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, into having to negotiate with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and with Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

Senate Republicans are continuing to insist that the bill will not go through without tax breaks for the corporations, and President Bush has backed that position.

A presidential veto has not been ruled out.

Labor and its allies see approval of the minimum wage hike as only one step in the fight for a true living wage.

They say that $7.25 an hour, although it eases some pain, does not solve the problems faced by workers and their families.

The Rev. Dr. Paul H. Slury, national chairman of the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, said passage of the bill will be “a significant step toward the day when all American workers earn a living wage, the day when a job will keep you out of poverty, not in it, but we still have a long way to go.”

Let Justice Roll is a national coalition of 91 religious, labor and community organizations devoted not just to a minimum wage increase but to the fight for a living wage.

It now takes the average worker 365 days to earn what many CEOs earn in one day.

John Niccolai, president of Local 464A of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, pointed to reports that Exxon Mobil and Shell, the two largest oil companies, posted record profits in 2006.

“Exxon’s profit of $39.5 billion broke the record it set last year for the largest profit ever by an American corporation,” he said. “Why are we talking about tax breaks for corporations? The gap between the working poor and the rich is an obscenity. The minimum wage raise is the first step — after that we need to make it easier to unionize and we can then fight for a living wage for everyone.

“When they tell you they can’t pay living wages, you tell them they have no business running a business,” Niccolai said. “A good union job is something all workers should have.”

A community service staffer for Rep. Rangel said, “The Republicans must be exposed for what they are doing, giving lip service to an increase in the minimum wage and then using tricks to delay its passage.”

Dallas gropes for justice

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 09:56:00 +0000

Will Dallas, Texas, overcome a long and shameful history of racism and injustice? Will it establish a reputation for even-handed and color-blind fairness? That’s the publicly stated goal of the first African American ever elected to the district attorney’s office in Dallas County, Craig Watkins. People here are watching to see if he can make it happen.

In the immediate sense, the question came up because Watkins made a public apology to James Waller after DNA evidence proved that Waller had suffered 23 years, 10 of them in prison, from a false accusation and conviction on child-rape charges. The evidence against him consisted of the child’s testimony that he recognized Waller’s voice and eyes. The real rapist had worn a mask. The famed Innocence Project at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School in New York arranged for the most modern type of DNA testing, which finally exonerated Waller completely.

New technology and dedicated lawyers at the Innocence Project are exposing the deep racism of American courts. In 11 of their other recent cases, DNA testing proved that the legal wheels of Dallas County have been grinding up the innocent. Dallas holds the record. There are more exonerations in Dallas County than in all but three entire states.

Moviegoers might also remember that the prize-winning documentary film “The Thin Blue Line” was about a young transient who was railroaded to prison from a Dallas courtroom under longtime district attorney Henry Wade.

Others may recall that one of the most famous women’s rights cases of all time, Roe v. Wade, originated in Dallas with Wade on the male supremacist side. Dallas, by the way, continues to honor Wade in story and legend. The powers that be recently named a county justice building for him.

On the other side of the justice equation, Dallas has made itself famous for not prosecuting racist crimes.

The policemen accused of drowning three handcuffed African American teens during a “Juneteenth” celebration at Comanche Crossing were let go in Dallas.

The policeman who played Russian roulette against a small Mexican American boy’s head received his slight punishment only after a national outcry.

Nobody went to jail for bombing African Americans’ homes when they began moving into a white area of town. None of the mob of lynchers who dragged an African American man, on a noose, out the upper window of the Old Red Courthouse (still standing downtown) were ever even identified, much less punished.

International news coverage of Dallas’ injustice system has gotten the Texas Legislature’s attention. Texas state Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston has announced that he will try again this session to pass his bill to create a Texas Innocence Commission to scrutinize cases in the state.

Texas state government, of course, has more than sufficient stains on its own skirts. Most recently, the re-elected Republican governor, Rick Perry, invited his friend Ted Nugent to provide rock music at the inaugural ball. Nugent, notorious for anti-Latino racism, wore a shirt made from the Confederate battle flag!

If justice is ever to associate itself with the judicial system in Dallas County, the time is most likely now. The new sheriff, Lupe Valdez, the first woman and the first Spanish-speaking sheriff in county history, and the new African American district attorney have made it their business to change the sordid course of Dallas judicial history. Progressives are united behind them in the effort.

Jim Lane (flittle7 @ yahoo.com) is a labor activist in North Texas.

Labor rights: not just for union members

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 09:54:00 +0000

This past week the Bureau of Labors Statistics (BLS) released alarming new figures on union membership. They’re down, from 12.5 percent of eligible workers a year ago to 12 percent. Some question the numbers because of changes in survey methods implemented by the BLS last January. Regardless, the continuing and relentless government and big business attacks on labor that started with Ronald Reagan’s destruction of the air traffic controllers union in 1981 have undoubtedly driven union membership down.

Of course there are also many other related factors. Every year giant U.S. corporations and banks move capital offshore, destroying union jobs and working conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers here. Even though these moves destroy whole communities and regions, they are mostly unregulated and even encouraged by current tax and banking laws. Technology has increased worker productivity with big impact on manufacturing industries. Yet workers have not shared in those gains. Instead of shorter hours or higher pay, workers get layoffs and plant closings, destroying millions of union jobs.

The big business press trumpets these declining union density numbers for many reasons. The main one is, they want us to believe unions are dying a natural death and are no longer needed in a modern global economy.

There are plenty of reasons why the far right and corporate America feel such glee at declining union membership. It is about increasing profits and asserting corporate power and control, to be sure. But, it is also about basic democracy.

Despite membership loss, unions remain the largest mass organizations of workers in our country. In membership, and increasingly in leadership, they most closely reflect the true multinational, multiracial, male/female makeup of the U.S. working class. Unions are central counterweights to the incredible political power and money of the capitalist class and those who serve them. Unions are about raising living standards and protecting workers, but they are also about giving voice to the interests and rights of all working people.

Abraham Lincoln had it right: “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” Of course that’s not the way things turned out under capitalism.

Yet, in all capitalist societies, except those under far-right dictatorships that outlaw unions, the labor movement is the democratic bulwark against capital. The labor movement, broadly defined, and its core organized sector have historically played that role. Just think child labor laws, health and safety laws, public education, minimum wage and overtime laws. Or the defeat of the ultra-right grip on Congress in the 2006 elections — even the right-wing press recognizes labor’s role in that one. And when organized labor is strong enough to raise the living standards of its members it puts upward pressure on wages and living standards for all workers.

Big capital and the right wing understand this very well. That is why, since the Wagner Act was passed in 1935, they have gone all-out to try and roll back this basic labor law that once guaranteed workers the right to organize and bargain collectively. That is why right-wing pro-business forces in Congress constantly chipped away at the Wagner Act, and continue to do so today.

The Taft-Hartley Act was a major assault on worker rights disguised as “democratic elections.” In fact, that “reform” invited the corporations into the union-busting business and gave the companies a say in union elections.

The Bill of Rights guarantee of freedom of association means that workers should have the right to form unions with no outside interference or restrictions, that companies should have no voice or role in the process.

Now a critically important effort is under way to restore the basic right to organize for all who work for a living. It takes the form of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), soon to be reintroduced in Congress. In the last Congress, the bill had 218 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. Today, in the new Congress, it has somewhere around 230 pledged to co-sponsor. The EFCA restores the right of workers to freely associate in unions without any interference from the employer, through the mechanism of a simple card check. When a majority in a workplace agrees to form a union by signing an authorization card, then the employer has to recognize it and bargain with its employees. The act also mandates a first contract in a set period of time and triples fines for illegal harassment or firing of workers for union activity.

All of labor is mobilized in this effort to build pressure for passage of the EFCA. Feeling the momentum of the 2006 elections, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions are united in making this a centerpiece of their legislative work. The labor movement is acutely aware that the EFCA is a critical component of the overall fight for democracy. They know that they have to build the widest possible progressive coalition to win passage. Labor sees this bill as a critical component of the 2008 elections.

A bigger union movement is central to all progressive movements and causes. Those who fight the ultra-right, who fight for equal rights, civil rights, women’s rights, peace and justice, democracy and human rights, need a bigger union movement. All of us, and the organizations that we belong to, need to become champions of the Employee Free Choice Act.

Scott Marshall (scott @ rednet.org) is chair of the Communist Party USA’s Labor Commission.

Union members discuss how to save the planet

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 08:36:00 +0000

ST. PAUL, Minn. (PAI) — Saying the future of the planet is at stake, union members and their allies gathered at a Labor and Sustainability Conference here Jan. 19-20 to discuss strategies to address the climate crisis and promote healthy development.

Organizers of the conference included members of United Auto Workers Local 879, who will soon lose their jobs when Ford Motor Co. shuts down its Ranger truck plant in St. Paul. The plant is run on hydroelectric power from the Mississippi River. It’s one of the few green manufacturing facilities in the nation.

Conference events were held in the training center adjacent to the plant and at the Local 879 hall across the street.

The Minnesota conference is just the latest development in what has become a stronger alliance between organized labor and environmental groups in the last decade, where unions push job creation in environmentally friendly ways.

Led by the Steelworkers, unions are pushing a 10-year, $300 billion plan to invest in new U.S. plants to create environmentally friendly products, such as hybrid cars and solar panels. The Apollo Alliance would also bring new high-paying factory jobs to areas of the U.S. hard hit by the loss of 3 million manufacturing jobs — half of them unionized — since 1999. Minnesota workshop topics included proposals for future green manufacturing at the Ford plant, the campaign for zero greenhouse gas emissions, conversion to wind power, effects of climate change on the region and confronting corporate globalization.

The theme of the conference was “a just transition from our present fossil-fuel economy to one that is based on clean, renewable energy,” said Local 879 Health and Safety Director Lynn Hinkle. “This rests on the notion that we can have both a healthy environment and good-paying union jobs in a green economy.”

Author Jack Rasmus, a former union organizer who has done extensive research on global warming, outlined the scope of the crisis in his keynote address. The frozen Arctic Ocean could be completely melted by 2040, and scientists say Greenland is melting twice as fast as previously predicted, Rasmus said. Massive ice melts will cause major climate changes and create a cycle of heavy rainfall in some areas and drought in others.

As sea levels rise, it’s estimated 300 million people will become refugees as coastal cities are submerged around the world. Many species of animals and plants also are threatened by the climate changes.

In addition to the human and environmental cost, global warming would have huge economic cost — as much as 20 percent of the world’s total economic production, or nearly $10 trillion, Rasmus said. That’s more than the economic cost of World Wars I and II and the Great Depression combined, he explained.

While the projections are bleak, the good news is that many people are waking up and starting to act, he added. “The reality is so overwhelming now that the tide has turned” and “there’s a new political phase opening up” in Congress and at state and local levels, Rasmus said.

Unfortunately, proposals in the past GOP-run Congress focused almost entirely on creating incentives for businesses to cut emissions, such as the “cap and trade” approach that lets companies sell environmental “credits” if their production falls below carbon dioxide emission limits, he added. The Bush administration’s Environmental Protection Agency also favors “cap and trade” plans. That practice, now used in Europe, has done little to reduce emissions because the limits are not stringent enough, Rasmus said.

Barbara Kucera writes for Workday Minnesota.

Food service workers demand corporate code of conduct

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 08:34:00 +0000

SAN JOSE, Calif. — They may top the list of the country’s “best companies to work for,” but the thousands of nonunion contract workers who serve gourmet lunches in the luxury cafeterias of Silicon Valley high-tech firms don’t see it that way.

The Unite Here union brought food service workers together with labor, elected officials, and community and faith leaders at Antioch Baptist Church Jan. 29 to launch a campaign for a corporate code of conduct.

While high-tech companies claim they are not responsible for workers employed by contract firms, contractors claim they are only doing what their clients want, Jim DuPont, Unite Here international vice president, told the crowd. “So we’ve got this corporation and that corporation and neither one will take any responsibility. That’s why we are creating Service Workers Rising.”

With the code of conduct, area high-tech firms would commit to contract with service companies that provide fair wages and adequate health benefits, comply with state and federal laws, and take a neutral stance toward union organizing. The event focused on companies contracting for food service with Guckenheimer Enterprises, which serves dozens of firms such as Genentech, Oracle, Applied Materials and Broadcom.

Workers told harrowing stories about their experiences on and off the job.

Josefina Espinoza, a food preparation worker at Broadcom, was hurt last July when a stack of trays fell and struck her face. “My nose was bleeding,” she said. “My co-workers came to help, but found there were only Band-Aids in the first aid kit.” When she told her manager what had happened, Espinoza said, he ordered her to wash her face, then stormed back into his office and slammed the door. “I was angry and upset,” she said. “I could not tend to my injury until after work.”

Adriana Gonzalez, a cashier at Genentech, told of her family’s struggle to make ends meet. She, her husband and their two sons live crowded together with her husband’s mother, his two brothers and their wives. With health coverage costing $258 a month, and $20 co-pays for doctors’ visits, she said, “We can only afford to go to the doctor when we are very, very sick.”

They and other workers emphasized the importance of standing together for union recognition.

The rafters rang in San Jose’s oldest African American church as South Bay Labor Council head Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, legendary United Farm Workers union co-founder Dolores Huerta and actor/director Danny Glover led the standing-room-only crowd in chants of “Sí, se puede” and pledges of support for the workers’ campaign.

“It is significant when we, men and women of color, come together to celebrate and honor each other, and to respect each other’s right to work and to organize,” Glover told the crowd.

Without the food service workers “putting food in their stomachs,” the high-tech workers “wouldn’t be able to do anything,” Huerta reminded the audience as she urged them to sign cards affirming their support. “We are going to try to reach the employers’ hearts, their consciences, and to let them know we are not going to let them keep these workers in a state of poverty,” she declared.

“Today is about all of us coming together to say this is the type of valley that we want to be,” said Ellis-Lamkins. “We’re going to be a community that says, if you work 40 hours a week, you deserve to be able to support yourself and your family.”

mbechtel @ pww.org

GOP demands tax payoff for minimum wage

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 08:30:00 +0000

Commentary

Anyone who believed there was going to be a bipartisan effort in Congress to reflect the voters’ views got doused with a bucket of cold water last week when GOP senators tried to block a bill that would increase the federal minimum wage to $7.25 over two years.

The 43 GOP senators who were insisting that business get even more tax cuts did not turn in their loincloths. They had 70 more amendments having nothing to do with the minimum wage that they intended to introduce in an effort to prevent a straight-up vote on the minimum wage.

Their aim was to poison the minimum wage proposal with onerous and irrelevant measures that Democrats could not support. To stop them, 60 votes would be needed to cut off debate. As of last week, that number was not there.

One such GOP amendment would have raised the minimum wage by $2.10 an hour, even in those states with higher levels than the federal level. While some might cheer this raise, it would in effect be punishing states that raised the minimum wage on their own.

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), co-sponsor of the bill, made a passionate defense of working people.

Alluding to the phony GOP amendments, he said, “We have now had amendments that have been worth over $200 billion ... We’ve had amendments on education of $35 billion. We’ve had health-savings amendments that will benefit people with average incomes of $112,000 ... We’ve had those kinds of amendments … But we still cannot get two dollars and fifteen cents — over two years. Over two years!

“$240 billion in tax breaks for corporations. $36 billion in tax breaks for small businesses. Increase in productivity — 42 percent over the last 10 years,” yelled Kennedy emotionally. “But do you think there’s any increase in the minimum wage? No.”

“What is the price, we ask the other side? What is the price that you want from these working men and women? What cost? How much more do we have to give to the private sector and to business?

“How many more billions of dollars do we have to give you, Mr. Republican? How many more dollars do we have to give you to get an increase in the minimum wage?”

“When does the greed stop, we ask the other side? That’s the question and that’s the issue.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid indicated that he would support an $8.3 billion tax package amendment which supposedly would provide incentives for small business investments and extend tax credits for employers that hire low-income or disadvantaged workers. Some political observers said the minimum wage measure most likely would proceed in the Senate with the tax breaks included. Some others felt that working people and other progressives should bombard their senators, demanding that they vote for a straight-up minimum wage bill, or, if they were in support, to hold the line.

On Jan. 31, the Senate voted 87-10 to go forward on the minimum wage measure with the tax breaks included.

Once it passes the Senate, it will have to be reconciled with the House version, which passed easily with no strings attached.

As a result of the elections, the political axiom about “the art of the possible” has shifted to the left. But success will still require massive efforts.

To hear the Kennedy speech, go to: .

Venezuelan Communists push workers councils

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 08:12:00 +0000

The Communist Party of Venezuela (CPV) is about to introduce a proposal that the National Assembly establish workers councils and include them under the new “Organic Law for Citizen Participation and People’s Power.” At a Caracas news conference on Jan. 15, Pedro Eusse, the party’s labor secretary, declared the purpose of the initiative to be the insertion of “working-class power” into the process of building socialism.

The proposal coincides with a major national campaign under way to launch a network of 50,000 community councils. It also comes at a time when the CPV is redefining its own political role — even whether it should continue to exist — following President Hugo Chavez’s call Dec. 15 for a single “party of the revolution” provisionally designated as the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

The development of workers councils fits within Venezuela’s current campaign to expand “participatory democracy,” the prime element of that project being the movement for community councils. Under the leadership of Assembly delegate David Velasquez, the National Assembly passed an enabling law for community councils on April 9, 2006. Velasquez, a CPV leader, is now shepherding the community councils into existence as head of the Ministry for People’s Participation and Social Development.

Eusse described for reporters the necessity for creating means by which the working class “can achieve progressively higher levels of consciousness that, as protagonists of people’s power, they are the class that leads the revolutionary process.”

The new councils will “assume political and economic functions for carrying out peoples’ power in workplaces and in industrial areas,” he said. Although they will not duplicate the work of labor unions, “they will share responsibilities, engage in mutual support, and above all shape class consciousness. They will promote workers’ unity, of both men and women, and protect social, economic, cultural and political rights.”

The workers councils will take on important responsibilities, including:

• “Managing information on the administration, finances and production output of private, public and worker-operated companies, also those already or about to be expropriated.”

• Organization of labor collectives that operate all such enterprises, private companies excepted.

• Formation of worker groups focusing on technical, cultural, political and ideological matters.

• Development of leadership skills essential for processes of production and oversight.

• Promotion of working-class involvement in the politics of the revolution, particularly issues “relating to defense of the homeland and the people’s democratic victories.”

• Coordination and cooperation with community councils and other “instruments of people’s power.”

• Monitoring, with labor unions, to assure that worker and union rights are respected.

While the National Assembly is deliberating on the proposal, the CPV will be promoting workers councils in workplaces, both private and public, throughout Venezuela. They will be seeking support from all social and political forces within the Bolivarian process.

In a recent interview, David Velasquez discussed the role community councils will assume in Venezuela, a description that applies equally to workers councils. “We must transform the old apparatus of the state,” he said, adding, “This office will begin to study how we transfer functions, resources and components to community power.” He distinguished between traditional “constitutional” power and a new “constituent power” that will enable Venezuelans, via “participation as protagonists,” to build “people’s power.”

Along with pushing for workers councils, the CPV is in the midst of assessing Chavez’s proposal for a unified socialist party. Spokespersons say the decision will be informed by ideas such as working-class centrality in the revolutionary process, leadership that is collective and unified, putting the revolution into the hands of one party, and, above all, commitment to building socialism.

The CPV was scheduled to hold a seminar on ideology on Feb. 3. Community-level party groups will meet Feb. 18, followed by conferences of regional committees on Feb. 25. The party will make its final decisions on its future role at a special national party congress March 3-4.

atwhit @ megalink.net

Bush health care plan: Youre on your own

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 07:53:00 +0000

Health care advocates slammed President Bush’s latest health care proposals as free-market fantasy that would dismantle employer-provided health coverage, enrich insurance companies and worsen the nation’s health care crisis.

Bush’s proposals are seen as part of a wider move to shift debate on health care away from the growing demand for universal, affordable health coverage, diverting it to corporate-friendly measures with higher cost and less coverage. While Bush’s plan is more extreme, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s health care plan, the new Massachusetts health insurance law and Sen. Ron Wyden’s “Healthy Americans Act” all put the main burden on individuals to purchase private health insurance.

Responding to Bush’s proposals, Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a statewide health care consumer advocacy coalition, wrote in a Jan. 29 blog, “Rather than expanding public programs (which are far cheaper per person than private coverage) or expanding group health coverage (which enjoy a group discount), he is encouraging people to get coverage in the most expensive way possible.” Bush’s plan amounts to “Message: You’re on your own,” said Wright.

Bush’s measures, outlined in his Jan. 22 State of the Union speech, would tax workers for what he contemptuously called “gold-plated” employer-provided health coverage, and would offer a tax deduction for people who buy health insurance on their own.

Steelworkers President Leo Gerard said in a statement, “Congress should reject this plan out of hand. It not only erodes employer coverage, where two out of three Americans now receive their health benefits, it’s a backdoor attempt to saddle union workers with a tax for the health care benefits they negotiate through collective bargaining.”

Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute commented, “More than anything, the health policies introduced by the Bush administration … are about shifting risk onto the individual.” She noted, “The individual market puts the onus on the individual to find and purchase health insurance, and there is no guarantee that the insurance they buy today will be available to them next year. Those unlucky enough to be unhealthy today or to get sick tomorrow will find it very difficult to find affordable insurance in the private market.”

Hanh Kim Quach, Health Access California health care policy coordinator, said Bush’s reference to “gold-plated” health plans “is actually referring to comprehensive health coverage that could actually provide patients protection from crushing medical bills should they ever get sick.”

What Bush and others are promoting as “affordable” coverage is high-deductible individual plans, but even these are expensive, and they leave individuals paying huge amounts for medical care out of their own pockets. The net effect, health advocates say, is that people will avoid getting needed health care, leading to worse health status and bigger health costs down the road.

At a Jan. 24 Washington press conference, health care advocates condemned Bush’s plan and others that rely on private insurers.

Dr. Oliver Fein, Cornell University professor of medicine and director of Physicians for a National Health Program, said such plans “would leave millions without coverage and continue to squander $300 billion annually on private insurance marketing, bill collectors and other useless bureaucratic activities.” Moreover, Fein said, “none of these plans would upgrade coverage for the tens of millions who are currently under-insured. Three-quarters of Americans bankrupted by medical bills last year had health insurance. Only national health insurance can cover all the 47 million uninsured and improve coverage for all other Americans at an affordable cost.”

Fein and other speakers called for enactment of HR 676, “The National Health Insurance Act: Medicare for All,” which Reps. John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich are reintroducing. The “single-payer” bill had 78 co-sponsors in the last Congress. More than 225 unions have endorsed it, including 17 state AFL-CIOs.

Other industrialized countries “all have national health care systems that cover everyone and are more efficient than our broken, fragmented system,” Kay Tillow of the Kentucky Nurses Professional Organization noted. “Single-payer is the only plan that will cover everyone and effectively control costs.”

Congressional Democrats are expected to focus on expanding health coverage for children as one starting point that can draw wide support. The federal-state Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which covers children in families with income too high for Medicaid, is up for renewal this year. Wright, of Health Access California, said, “This federal fight is crucial not just in the effort to cover all children, but for health reform in general.”

suewebb @ pww.org

Union blasts immigration raid at Smithfield

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 07:23:00 +0000

Instigated by a company hell-bent on keeping out a union, the U.S. government raided the world’s largest pork processing plant, Smithfield Packing, in Tar Heel, N.C., on Jan. 24.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) charged that the company had conspired with federal immigration agents to discourage Smithfield workers from unionizing.

Gene Bruskin, an organizer for the union, said Smithfield has a history of threatening workers with deportation if they try to unionize.

Bruskin told the World, “It is clear that Smithfield has conspired with the INS to orchestrate a raid based on trumped up charges that would result in searches for so-called illegal workers. They did this to discourage the workers from organizing.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided the plant on the morning of Jan. 24 and arrested 21 workers — 18 Mexican workers and three Guatemalan workers — all of whom the immigration agency claims are “illegal” and all of whom it says will be deported.

Bruskin said several things point to the obvious “set-up” in this government raid.

He explained that most often when the ICE conducts raids, it links the roundup of “so-called illegals” to various types of alleged criminal activity. “This way they claim they are more interested in fighting crime than in going after minority groups,” he said.

In this latest Smithfield raid none of those arrested were charged with any criminal activity — only charges of civil law violations (immigration law) were filed.

Another union official pointed out that big companies normally go out of their way to avoid spectacular immigration raids at their plants. They’d much rather work quietly and avoid a disruptive raid, he explained, “unless, of course, they are trying to scare the workers who are trying to unionize. Then, a big raid comes in handy.”

When the World questioned Dennis Pittman, Smithfield’s public relations spokesman, he admitted, “Smithfield has been working since last July to verify that 5,200 workers at the plant had legal employment and immigration documents.”

When asked whether the company decision to begin working with the government last July had anything to do with a massive two-day walkout at the plant that month in response to the firing of 50 Latino workers, Pittman said, “No, this was routine.”

The World asked why, if Smithfield’s cooperation with the government amounted to nothing more than routine checking of immigration status, the company would turn over 5,200 names — the names of almost the entire work force at the plant.

Asked if this was designed to coerce workers into keeping quiet and staying away from the union, he replied, “No. You have to list every one to be fair. You check them all because we don’t want people to start accusing us of profiling and God knows what else.”

When asked him whether the raid had anything at all to do with 12 years of struggle by the workers there to be represented by the UFCW, Pittman said, “This has nothing to do with any kind of struggle. There was no struggle. We weren’t trying to terrorize anybody.

“We, I mean it [the raid] was all done very professionally and non-threateningly,” he said. “Nobody called in any helicopters and we didn’t have paddy wagons [sic] or buses where you look out from caged windows or uniformed police or anything like that at all. It was a professional job from beginning to end.”

There is ample evidence that the company has done quite a few “professional” jobs, including violating international human rights standards by retaliating against workers who report their injuries and violating labor laws by using threats, intimidation and violence against workers who tried to organize a union. Human Rights Watch and the National Labor Relations Board have both cited Smithfield for these violations.

The company has also done a “professional” job of trying to create racial tension among white, African American, Native American and immigrant workers.

But workers have also responded by building unity among all races. In addition to the multiracial walkout in July, many Latino workers joined African American workers in a walkout on Martin Luther King’s birthday, demanding it be a paid holiday.

It may be, observers say, that it is just this kind of united action the company fears most and that is prompting it to retaliate with deportations to spread its own type of fear.

The struggle to unionize continues unabated at the plant. Hundreds of workers are involved, the union says, and local unions, civil rights groups and churches nationwide have gotten together with these workers to form the group Justice at Smithfield.