People Before Profit blog

The struggle for the right to organize a union

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 10:13:00 +0000

While 45 percent of U.S. workers express the desire to have a union, only 13 percent have one. Using bold, repressive and mostly illegal methods, corporate America has held new organizing to a tiny trickle as it systematically works to weaken and destroy unions where they exist.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) have introduced the Employee Free Choice Act at the initiative of the AFL-CIO. In the Senate, it is S.1925, with 26 sponsors. In the House, it is HB 3619, with 113 sponsors. It will take an earthquake-strength movement to bring passage.

This new law couldn’t come too soon. The National Labor Relations Act, passed as the Wagner Act in 1935, and greatly weakened by the Taft-Harley amendments, doesn’t cover much and is rarely enforced. Penalties against violators are so late and so weak as to make employer lawbreaking the preferred method of remaining union-free.

How do these employers do it?

Corporations hire anti-union consultants who have the tactics down to a science. They bring together the first level supervisors – the ones closest to the workers with the greatest influence over the conditions of daily work. These supervisors are told that their only job until the union election is to assure that the 15 or so workers they supervise vote no. Each supervisor must report on each worker’s attitudes and carry out individualized tactics to influence each one. Current labor law provides no rights to these supervisors. Any supervisor who does not agree to the plan is told, truthfully, that she or he can and will legally be fired for failure to carry it out.

In what one employer called the “wring-out,” if the supervisor did not cooperate by providing detailed information on each worker, the anti-union consultants would wring the information out of him.

Does the employee have a disabled child? Great! The supervisor must pull the employee aside to let him know that if the union is voted in, his health insurance will change. His child will not be covered because this is a pre-existing condition. Another employee is going through a rocky marriage. Since that employee is particularly sensitive to the issue of economic security, the supervisor is instructed to inform the employee that the company will never negotiate with the union and the plant will close if workers go union, using the line, “I’d hate to see you have to face that in addition to the stress you are under. Won’t you commit to me that you will vote no?” Another employee is single but pregnant – a very useful piece of information. The supervisor calls her in to make certain she knows that as a single person her health insurance does not cover the delivery. She is told how much it will likely cost. Then she is told that the company could change this to help her – the first step is to remove the union button.

NLRB elections are rarely democratic. The full force of the employer’s control over the worker’s job is ruthlessly brought to bear in the final period preceding the election. Firings are common and highly effective for the employer. Nothing else invokes such fear. If the NLRB finds the firing to be illegal, it happens years down the road when the union has already been defeated. Most cases don’t get that far since other workers must risk their jobs to bring the charge. The NLRB initiates no proceedings on its own. The burden is all on the workers and the union to seek to enforce the law.

The Employee Free Choice Act wouldn’t return us to the fuller protections of the original Wagner Act and the Norris-LaGuardia Act. Workers would still be denied some effective forms of struggle such as the secondary boycott. “Right to work” laws would remain in place. Unions could still be sued for unfair labor practices. And no law can give us the dynamic and vibrant union movement that inspires workers with its vision. Yet the advances would be real and vitally important: recognition through card check; tripling of economic penalties for unlawful firing of workers; priority given by the NLRB to cases where the law is broken while workers are organizing.

On Dec. 10, union and community activists held 90 events in 64 cities to commemorate the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose Article 23 provides for freedom of association of workers and their right to build unions. The Dec. 10 events pointed to the absence of these rights in the U.S. Activists in every congressional district have begun work to put this issue on the agenda in the 2004 election campaign. You can begin by sending letters and e-mails to your representative and senators asking them to become co-sponsors of the Employee Free Choice Act.

Carolyn Taylor is a labor activist in Kentucky. She can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Labor leads coalition to victory over corporate drug lords

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 09:22:00 +0000

CLEVELAND – Back in the year 2000, few people in Ohio believed a prescription drug bill with real benefits could be passed, not with a right-wing controlled State Legislature (some of whom call themselves the “caveman caucus”), an unfriendly governor, a weak Democratic Party and a drug industry ready to spend $16 million to prevent such a bill.

Three years later, the people won a major victory. Last month, the Ohio Legislature, voting 94-1 in the House and 32-1 in the Senate, passed into law “Ohio’s Best Rx,” which was signed by Gov. Bob Taft on Dec. 18. The drug industry’s lobbyists, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing Association (PhRMA), lobbied in favor of the bill.

How could such a “miracle” happen? Only through hard work, building a coalition involving thousands of people and having a clear goal. If people in your state need lower-cost prescription drugs, read on. You can make it happen!

What Ohio’s Best Rx guarantees

The agreement, now law, provides the following:

• Ohio’s Best Rx will cover all Ohioans 60 years of age and over, regardless of income.

• It will also cover uninsured people younger than 60 if their annual income is 250 percent of the federal poverty level or less. That means an annual income of not more than $22,450 for an individual, and $46,000 per year for a family of four. There will be no means testing. Applicants merely have to sign a statement that they have told the truth.

• Under the Ohio’s Best Rx program, participants will get the same discounts already negotiated for state employees and retirees. Under the law, the state may keep up to 5 percent of each manufacturer’s rebate for state administrative expenses. Consumers will pay a $1.00 dispensing fee.

• The Ohio AFL-CIO estimates the discounts may be 20 to 40 percent for eligible participants.

• Uncooperative drug manufacturers could have their drugs removed from the state employee health plan’s preferred drug list, and be required to get prior authorization from the state for any payments.

Year one: Getting started

Three years ago, upon hearing of an Rx bill just passed in Maine, the Cleveland AFL-CIO Retiree Council got a resolution passed at the state AFL-CIO convention calling for a campaign for a prescription drug fair pricing act. In January 2001, the council brought together four to five groups in the Cleveland area to talk about forming a coalition. Representatives came from the Retiree Council, UHCAN-Ohio (a health care advocacy group), a couple of unions, and a faith-based group. We concluded this was a prime issue, that a broad coalition could be formed, and that the Maine bill was a good model in that it cut prescription drug prices through negotiations rather than subsidizing the “drug lords.”

To prepare our base, we got mailing lists from different organizations, including most unions, faith-based and community groups, senior advocates and health advocates. Someone even went through the phone book and noted every group that sounded like it might have an interest in lower prescription drug costs.

We drafted a petition as a tool for educating the public. A resolution of support was drawn up for organizations to join the coalition. (Later, when a bill was introduced in the Legislature, we drew up a resolution of support for local governments to endorse.) We reproduced a few articles and research pieces that explained what kind of bill we were proposing.

These were mailed to over 250 groups. The mailing got 15-20 groups to sign on, and about 15 people showed up at our next meeting. We held monthly meetings with 20-35 people at every meeting, even three years later. Thus, the Coalition for Affordable Prescription Drugs was born.

Getting a bill

A few months later, the state AFL-CIO requested a bill from Dale Miller, a strong pro-union state representative. The Ohio Prescription Drug Fair Pricing Act was introduced in both chambers in May 2001. It was modeled after the Maine bill with some changes.

Now we had something tangible. In the next eight months, 20,000 signatures were gathered on our petitions. Our coalition grew because members systematically talked to other groups and got them to join. Eventually, the Coalition grew to 300 organizations, and included every union, groups from nearly every religious denomination, numerous community organizations, senior groups and senior centers, even managers of senior apartment buildings, an Elks Club and a church ladies’ auxiliary. In addition, some 70 local governments – city councils, village township boards and county commissioners – passed resolutions of support. A dozen of these bodies were led by Republicans.

Year two: Going statewide

In January 2002, a statewide coalition was formed. Co-chairs of the coalition were Bill Burga, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, and Athena Godet-Calogeras, a member of the staff of UHCAN-Ohio. This was a critical combination. From the onset, labor was the key mover. It assigned staff to work on the campaign, including this writer. Most of the funds and much of the foot-power came from labor. As co-chair, Athena Godet-Calogeras was key in guaranteeing the coalition included faith-based and community groups as equal partners.

We were able to reach out to people in a dozen counties but were able to build local coalitions in only a few counties. With the addition of statewide organizations such as United Way, United Council of Churches, the Ohio AFL-CIO and 22 others, the coalition took on stature, respectability (in the eyes of politicians and business) and power. The statewide groups represented some 5 million members, and local groups additional thousands.

Changing tactics

After a year of trying in vain to move our bill through the Legislature (no hearings were ever held), we talked about using the legislative ballot initiative. Ohio is one of a few states that have this vestige of popular democracy.

Under this law, we had to collect over 96,000 valid signatures of registered voters (3 percent of the number of voters in the last gubernatorial election). A minimum number of these signatures had to come from at least 44 of the 88 counties in the state.

Once the attorney general validated the signatures, our petition would go to the Legislature as a bill. The Legislature would have four months to pass our bill, amend it, or ignore it.

After four months, if they did nothing or passed something the coalition didn’t like, we could gather an additional 96,000. Once validated, our bill would go directly on the ballot for people to vote on.

There was little doubt, even amongst the opposition, that, once it was on the ballot, voters would pass it overwhelmingly, no matter how much money the drug lords put up to oppose it. After considerable discussion, the statewide coalition decided to proceed with the legislative initiative.

Now we were about to embark on a massive, statewide petition drive, relying solely on volunteers, to get 96,000-plus valid signatures. Previous statewide petition campaigns always involved hiring professional signature gatherers.

The petition campaign

After numerous delays by the state in approving the language of our petition (from July to mid-October), we finally started the drive. In barely eight weeks, during the colder months, covering the entire state, we succeeded in gathering 143,000 signatures, meeting the minimum number of signatures in 46 counties.

Our biggest effort was on Election Day 2002, when volunteers stood outside polls in the rain gathering 40,000 signatures, of which 22,000 were collected by AFSCME, the public employees’ union, statewide. This demonstrated what labor is capable of when it mobilizes its members.

We organized SOS days: Sign-up On Sundays for churches and Sign-up On Site for unions. Petitions were circulated at bingo parlors and craft shows, at meetings, religious services, in senior buildings and on street corners.

We turned in the 143,000 signatures to the Ohio Secretary of State 10 days before Christmas, 2002.

Year three: The challenge

PhRMA, representing the drug dealers, immediately filed suits in 45 county courts, seeking to invalidate our signatures. They were prepared to spend at least $16 million to defeat this effort. Their challenges were mostly technical. The main one was that where a signer signed for his or her spouse (mostly among the elderly), the entire petition should be thrown out.

Even after a number of court hearings in which thousands of our signatures were thrown out, we still had enough valid signatures.

Then, last June, a PhRMA rep suddenly contacted Bill Burga of the Ohio AFL-CIO about trying to resolve this issue. Despite our natural skepticism, the two sides met.

The victory

After six meetings, and consultations with our state steering committee, an agreement was reached. The GOP legislative leadership and the governor gave immediate support and promised quick passage without amendments. These promises were kept and the governor signed the bill into law on Dec. 18.

While we didn’t win everything, we won about 70-80 percent of what we were aiming for. A Prescription Drug Review Council comprising organized labor, consumer advocates, state legislators and representatives of pharmaceutical manufacturers will monitor the program and ensure participants are getting the best values possible.

One negative clause states that consumers who are “eligible” for coverage offered by their employer, but choose not to pay for that coverage, are not eligible for the new program.

This law is unique in three ways:

• Drug coverage is nearly universal and covers 75-80 percent of those without insurance. Most state plans are limited to seniors or the very poor.

• Drug prices will be reduced by 20-40 percent, with drug manufacturers giving rebates to the state. This is unlike programs in other states that subsidize the drug lords and their ever-increasing prices.

• The Ohio program is self-sustaining, with no need for an additional tax burden on the public.

The plan will go into effect by mid-year, 2004. That which had no chance of success has been won!

The fight for spin

What brought about this dramatic change? One of the drug company representatives mentioned the 143,000 signatures. I believe the GOP may have asked PhRMA to reach an agreement in order to prevent a ballot fight during the presidential elections. Eventually, the bill would have gone on the Ohio ballot. They could not allow this to happen during a presidential election. A ballot fight would make the GOP look bad and bring out voters who just might vote for the Rx bill and against the Republican Party that opposed it.

I also think they calculated that by negotiating an agreement they could limit the damage to one state and control the spin. The law is already being touted as something put forth by the drug companies, with the GOP’s support (and, in passing, the labor-led coalition). That is why we must publicize the people’s role in winning the impossible, to show that with a similar effort, this kind of victory can be won elsewhere.

We will have to drive home the lesson, especially with labor, that coalition-building is the only way to win and it must involve the membership. Victories won’t be won from the top alone (nor from the bottom alone).

Ohio’s Best Rx offers a clear alternative to Bush’s regressive Medicare drug bill recently passed by Congress. The Ohio bill, while only a partial solution, moves in the direction of providing lower priced medicines to large numbers of people without coverage. The federal bill takes a huge step toward destroying Medicare via privatization, and guarantees increasingly higher prices by prohibiting Medicare from negotiating lower prices with the drug lords.

John Gallo is coordinator for the Ohio Coalition for Affordable Prescription Drugs and on the staff of the Cleveland AFL-CIO Federation of Labor. He can be reached at jgallo@stratos.net.

Solidarity with Utah miners

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 08:45:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO – In Huntington, Utah, coal miners at Co-Op Mines make $5.25 to $7 an hour, a third of the average wage in the industry. Seventy-five of the workers, who are almost all immigrants from Mexico, were fired Sept. 22 for protesting dangerous working conditions and the suspension of a co-worker who was pursuing union representation. Seventy-five percent of the mine’s 83 hourly workers have signed a representation petition with the United Mine Workers of America.

A delegation of the miners spoke to a solidarity meeting in at Centro del Pueblo in San Francisco on Jan. 18. The four miners, Benito Meza, Juan Salazar, Aliston Kennedy, and Ricardo Chavez, reported that most workers lack medical insurance and retirement benefits. They are forced to use defective machinery and do not receive adequate safety training. Female workers have no bath house.

Speakers at the solidarity meeting included Walter Johnson, head of the San Francisco Labor Council, and representatives of the Longshoreman’s Union, Labor Council on Latin American Advancement, Day Laborers Program, Service Employees Union and the Chinese Progressive Association. Tracy Johnson of the United Food and Commercial Workers spoke for a large contingent of striking grocery workers from Southern California who attended. Among the donations announced were $5,000 from the ILWU and a check sent from the Engineers Union of New Zealand for $1,760.20.

On Feb. 7, a giant support rally will be held in Huntington, Utah. The ILWU pledged to have its entire Drill Team there in solidarity.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org.

THIS WEEK IN LABOR

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 08:30:00 +0000

Ohio Steelworkers sign contract

Steelworkers at AK Steel Corporation ended 52 months without a collective bargaining agreement Jan. 26 with the signing of a final contract settlement with the company formerly known as Armco. That period included a bitter 39-month lockout of workers at the company’s Mansfield, Ohio plant. According to the Steelworkers union, the last remaining “temporary replacement workers” left the Mansfield plant in December 2003. The settlement includes an increase in the return to work bonuses and credit for the union members’ seniority during the lockout.

“I’m most proud of our members and their families in Mansfield for the solidarity they demonstrated during times of unimaginable hardship,” said Steelworkers President Leo Gerard.

Justice delayed is justice denied

It took 12 years for 29 workers who were illegally fired for forming a union with the United Steelworkers of America to win a legal battle with Weldun International, Inc., in Bridgman, Mich. “This case shows the crucial need for labor law reform,” said USWA President Leo Gerard. “It should never have taken this long for the workers to be made whole for what was taken from them illegally.”

In 1992, more than 65 percent of the workers at the Weldun facility signed union authorization cards with the USWA. When the company fired the 29 and sent their work to another shop, the USWA filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board, winning a decision ordering the company to pay and reinstate the employees. Through successive appeals of the ruling the company was able to get away with its illegal mass firing for over a decade. Under the settlement, the workers will receive an average of over $41,000 each to cover wages and medical expenses lost during the 12 years.

$7,000 for a life?

ABC Sports cameraman Richard Umansky, 48, fell to his death from an unguarded platform at University of Wisconsin football stadium in November. OSHA fined ABC Sports $7,000 for not properly guarding the open sided platform. National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians Union called Umansky’s death “tragic and avoidable.”

Uniform justice? No penalties for labor law violators

Cintas, the nation’s largest industrial uniform provider, illegally fired union supporters, solicited employees to oppose unionization, and threatened workers by telling them they would lose benefits if they did not engage in anti-union activities, according to a complaint issued by the NLRB Jan. 7 after an 11-month investigation. However, under current NLRB procedures, it will likely be years before fired workers are reinstated. (See story above about steelworkers in Bridgman, Mich.) Meanwhile, to remedy the damage done by threats, bribes and interrogation, Cintas is only required to post a notice promising not to do it again! The NLRB assigns no fines for these violations.

Pensions at risk

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the federal agency that insures pension plans, announced Jan. 16 that its deficit had grown from $3.6 billion to $11.2 billion over the last year. The agency took over 152 bankrupt single-employer pension plans last year covering 206,000 people, according to a report by Associated Press. About 34.5 million people are covered by 29,500 pension plans sponsored by single employers. Underfunding for all pension plans is estimated at more than $350 billion.

This Week in Labor was compiled by Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org).

Labor brings dream alive in Florida

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 04:47:00 +0000

ORLANDO, Fla. – Inspired by Dr. King’s struggles for civil, voting and workers’ rights, the AFL-CIO brought its annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebrations to Florida this crucial election year. The four days of labor-community actions centered here echoed King’s finest traditions by assembling civil rights activists, union members and leaders with the community to organize voter involvement.

“Welcome to Florida, the scene of the crime,” said Tony Hill, Florida state senator, to the over 150 union members from across the country gathered at the Dr. James R. Smith Community Center Jan. 16 for a public forum on voter registration and community service.

“The plan is to pack our bags, hit the road and don’t stop till we beat Bush,” said Bill Lucy, president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, chairing the forum. “If I didn’t know anything else about Bush other than the appointment of Pickering [to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals], that would be enough for me,” said Lucy.

“Bypassing the Senate to appoint Charles Pickering is an insult to all Americans who still believe in Dr. King’s dream,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney in a press statement issued the day of the forum. “Pickering has been rejected in two consecutive sessions of Congress because of [his] record in civil rights cases, including voting rights and employment discrimination cases.”

In fighting against racism and Bush, Lucy cautioned the audience “if the white South is abandoned to the GOP, we will forever lose. This is a contest to win the hearts and minds of people who suffer like we suffer.”

“To win,” Lucy continued, “we have to ask the question, ‘Why doesn’t everyone have health care, education, a living wage?’ We can’t win talking to ourselves.”

“And we’d better not act like business as usual,” warned Andrea Brooks, national vice president of AFGE, the American Federation of Government Employees. Having no union in the Department of Homeland Security means discrimination for thousands of its workers. The supervisor decides raises “without a merit system, so Black and Brown workers and women are not in charge of their lives,” said Brooks. “Federal workers are on the frontline of the fight for merit pay.”

When Bush declared the Iraq war to be over, according to Brooks, soldiers became “not entitled to wartime benefits. How can you say the administration cares when they close outpatient clinics, reduce wards, and put veterans on waiting lists?”

Bush waged war “based on lies – spending billions on preemptive war that has no moral justification,” said an impassioned Kent Wong, director of the Center for Labor Research and Education at UCLA. “Bush is permanent war, racism, sexism and homophobia.”

Calling a second-term Bush an “unimaginable danger” to labor and civil rights, Wong urged the crowd to draw strength from Dr. King who “didn’t turn back.”

In the question period, Linda Chavez-Thompson, AFL-CIO executive vice president, was asked for her proposals on collective action to defeat Bush in November. She put the question back to the whole crowd, saying the leadership “can talk and put programs together, but it comes down to the question: What do you think, and what will you do?”

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org. See related story, page 6.

White House pushes deficit to trillions

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 04:23:00 +0000

Just a week after bragging in his State of the Union speech that the economy is on the mend, George W. Bush faced angry charges that his policies have pushed working people deeper in debt to enrich the wealthy elite.

The Fair Taxes for All Coalition (FTFA) released a scathing statement Jan. 26 citing a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that the federal deficit will reach an all-time record $477 billion this year. Over the coming decade, the CBO projected the deficit mushrooming to $2.4 trillion, a trillion dollars higher than the nonpartisan agency projected last August.

The new deficit projections “show that President Bush’s tax cuts are harming American families now and into the future,” the FTFA charged. Bush’s $2 trillion in tax cuts, approved by the Republican-majority Congress, “has not improved the standard of living of average Americans or created new good jobs,” it continued.

Referring to Bush’s call in the State of the Union to make those tax cuts permanent, the FTFA added, “The administration continues to push reckless proposals that divert even more money from health care, education, and Social Security to give more tax breaks to millionaires. … As today’s CBO numbers confirm, the Bush administration is imposing trillions of dollars in debt on current and future taxpayers.”

The FTFA unites 325 organizations, such as People for the American Way, National Women’s Law Center, AFSCME, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, USAction, and the Campaign for America’s Future. It said “millions of Americans (have) pledged to defeat Bush administration tax proposals. … The time has come to reform the tax system to insure that everyone pays their fair share and to provide adequate revenue to assure a world class education for our children, quality health care, retirement security, and economic opportunity.”

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney also denounced Bush’s claims of an economic recovery in the State of the Union address. “Mr. Bush’s tax and trade policies have been tried and they have failed,” Sweeney said. “When it comes to jobs, all we have to show for three years of multi-trillion-dollar tax cuts for the rich, free-wheeling trade policy and race-to-the-bottom corporate globetrotting is the loss of 2.9 million private-sector jobs, including a staggering 2.6 million manufacturing jobs.”

The AFL-CIO also denounced Bush’s attempt to peddle a recycled scheme to privatize Social Security. “Privatizing Social Security would be a windfall to Wall Street, an investment industry still mired in corruption scandal,” it said in a related statement.

Three days later, the Senate voted to approve an $832 billion omnibus-spending bill. Senators bowed to Bush’s veto threat and removed from the bill an amendment that would have nullified the administration’s new labor rules stripping 8 million workers of overtime protection. Democratic senators had waged a filibuster to block the measure, but the Republicans succeeded in mustering a 61-32 vote to cut off the debate.

“The Senate prematurely ended debate on a critical issue that could impact the financial security of working families across the country,” Sweeney said. He predicted that this frontal assault “will galvanize workers who are appalled by the administration’s attempt to deprive them of fair compensation for extra hours on the job.”

Sweeney said the White House and congressional offices have been bombarded with 1.5 million e-mails, letters, faxes, and phone calls over the past year protesting Bush’s attack on the 40-hour workweek, a right won and defended over a century of struggle reaching back to the Haymarket Massacre.

The White House set up a blocking system to prevent e-mails from unions and other advocacy groups from being delivered.

AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka told Sen. Arlen Specter’s Senate Appropriations Labor Subcommittee that war veterans would be especially hard hit by Bush’s new rules.

“Under the Bush proposal, if an employer determines that the training veterans have received in the military is equivalent to a four-year professional degree, that employer will now be allowed to deny those veterans overtime eligibility and refuse to pay them anything for overtime work,” Trumka testified. “This proposal is offensive.”

Air Force veteran Randy Fleming, a technician at the Boeing plant near Wichita, Kan., told the hearing, “If you think it’s okay for the government to renege on deals, I think it should be your job to tell our military men and women in Iraq that when they come home, their service to their country will be used as a way to cut their overtime pay.”

The author can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com.

On Bushs immigration reform

Fri, 23 Jan 2004 09:27:00 +0000

Opinion

Now that President Bush has made his famous statement on how he is going to take care of the 8 to 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, the corporate media are emitting their usual blather and spin.

Right-wing pundits are shrieking about “giveaways” and “amnesty” for “lawbreakers” and potential terrorists, while somewhat more moderate sectors of the press are hailing the proposals as a great gift to the hardworking and honest undocumented workers in our midst. Both of these interpretations are dead wrong.

Bush did not propose an “amnesty” for “illegal immigrants.” He proposed a glorified “bracero” or guest-worker program for workers living without papers in the United States, along with others who might some day decide to come here. While it’s true that some immigrants would be allowed to apply for legal residency, the plan breaks little new ground in this respect, either.

The plan would guarantee a docile and low-paid workforce for certain employers, and would help the president’s agenda of accumulating data files on everyone in the country, but would not give undocumented workers a path to citizenship and equality. It would codify the super-exploitation of the undocumented instead of ending it.

What is chiefly wrong with the proposals is that they do not guarantee that the mass of undocumented workers and their kin will be allowed to regularize their status in this country and enjoy equal rights with other non-citizens, and/or eventually achieve citizenship.

Immigrant workers will be forced to rely on the good will of a single employer, the one who signed the papers stating that a job was available to them and not wanted by a U.S. citizen. This gives employers a mighty union-busting tool, and thus will serve to keep wages down and working conditions bad.

Further, without any guarantees, the immigrant has to deliver himself or herself into the hands of the U.S. authorities, and rely on them not to use this contact as a basis for arrest and deportation. Given the recent experience of the “registration” program for nationals of Muslim countries, to place such reliance in the U.S. administration would be folly.

What game is Mr. Bush playing? The press says he is angling to get Latino votes in the 2004 elections by creating a vague feeling of good will toward him in this sector of the population. Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, former Mexican ambassador to the United Nations, told the Spanish-language newspaper Hoy that Bush’s plan may be yet another mechanism to collect files on people so as to be able to crack down on them later. Both of these things may be true. I think, however, that Bush is playing a deeper and more devious game, one intended to weaken solidarity among forces opposing his policies.

The struggle for the rights of immigrant workers in the United States has been building a mighty coalition between the immigrant communities and organized labor, which has strengthened both. Suffice it to mention last year’s successful Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride.

The government of Mexico has been an inconsistent ally in this effort. Mexican President Vicente Fox, trying to keep an increasingly restive Mexican public opinion at bay, has to be seen as doing something to relieve the plight of Mexicans north of the border.

President Bush is not a fool, he just plays one on television. Or maybe he is a bit dim, but he has a team of crafty and ruthless advisors who know how to play the game of divide and conquer. Seeing the de-facto three-part alliance among U.S. labor, immigrant workers and the Mexican government, the Bush administration is now exploring ways to drive wedges into that alliance. Such plans must be foiled.

Strengthening and expanding the labor-immigrant alliance is a critical task. In the few days since Bush made his announcement, major labor union leaders have joined immigrant community leaders in criticizing the Bush proposals, and continuing to demand a full legalization program. But at the level of the mass of the immigrant population, we will have to see if the efforts of some to sell this fraudulent plan as “a new amnesty” will lead to false optimism.

Be that as it may, this labor-immigrant alliance needs to be further built, including organizing support and solidarity for it from all sectors of the U.S. population, immigrant and non-immigrant alike. All progressive activists should understand the importance of this task, and give what support they can.

Emile Schepers is an activist in Chicago and can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Cintas workers expose sweatshop conditions

Fri, 23 Jan 2004 07:47:00 +0000

CHICAGO – A sea of yellow signs demanding “No fares for sweatshop wear” confronted directors for Metra, Northeast Illinois’ commuter rail line, as they conducted business Jan. 16. Cintas workers and their supporters were at the meeting to demand Metra not renew its uniform contract with Cintas.

The workers say Cintas, the nation’s largest industrial uniform provider, is subcontracting out the work to sweatshops across Chicago. The previous six-year contract was $6.6 million. Cintas, headquartered in Cincinnati, made $249 million in profits on $2.7 billion in revenues last year.

Before the meeting a number of workers recounted their experiences with Cintas. “Everyone works in fear. We were constantly yelled at like we were animals,” said Teresa Williams, who made uniforms at one sweatshop on the city’s North Side. Williams said working conditions were often dangerous. Boxes blocked aisles and windows were barred. Supervisors harassed employees and threatened immigrant workers. “They would say, ‘If you make a complaint, you and your family will be sent back home,’” said Williams, who quit after a week and had to fight the company to get her full wages.

OSHA has cited Cintas’ Schaumburg, Ill., plant several times for violating health and safety laws and fined the company thousands of dollars. Maria Reyes has worked there for seven years. Twice she was severely shocked by machines she was working on. After the accidents her supervisors began to harass her and look for an excuse to fire her. “They didn’t believe me. Today I’m not able to do daily chores such as prepare food for my children. My life will never be the same again,” she said.

Thera Jones worked at a Bedford Park, Ill., laundry along with several hundred other workers for 13 years. When Cintas bought the company two years ago, conditions in the plant began to deteriorate immediately with the implementation of a piece work system. Management pitted the African American and Latino workers against Polish immigrant workers by giving the Polish workers work that allowed a higher piece rate. Complaints were ignored and finally all the African American and Latino workers were laid off. “They said it was due to Sept. 11, but the layoffs had nothing to do with it. They didn’t even go by seniority,” said Jones, who is African American. The workers have since filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Joe Costigan, secretary-treasurer of the Chicago and Central States Joint Board of UNITE, said it is common for Cintas to subcontract out to sweatshops to increase profits. Denise Dixon, field organizer for Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, said, “We are concerned with Metra using taxpayer dollars and ticket fares to support a company that systematically discriminates against women and minorities.”

The author can be reached at jbachtell@rednet.org.

Arizona retirees launch new weapon

Fri, 23 Jan 2004 07:34:00 +0000

PHOENIX – Arizona retirees and all senior residents now have an organization ready to do battle on their behalf, as nearly 100 delegates and guests met Jan. 14-15 to found the Arizona chapter of the Alliance of Retired Americans (ARA).

Attendance by Arizona’s AFL-CIO leaders, national ARA leaders, state and local elected officials, along with special appearances by presidential candidates and television stars, reinforced the feeling that this was an important step. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano sent a proclamation making Jan. 14 Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans Day.

The new state organization, like a god in Greek mythology, was born not as a baby, but as a full-grown organization, active in the struggle for a better deal for retired Americans. Looking around the room at the Phoenix Wyndham Hotel, I recognized many of the retirees I had met on picket lines and at demonstrations against the Bush attacks on Medicare. Several of the leading organizers, such as Luisa Kaufman, now president of the Arizona Alliance, were arrested last summer at actions at the Phoenix and Tucson offices of ultra-right-wing Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

After much pressure, including educational forums and lobbying efforts, Sen. Kyl was finally forced to hold a town meeting on the Medicare bill.

Ed Coyle, executive director of the ARA, opened the convention and stressed the importance of Arizona’s 10 electoral votes in the November election. He pointed to Arizona’s prominent place on all lists of 2004 swing states. Michael McGrath, secretary-treasurer of the Arizona AFL-CIO, called 2004 a “make-or-break” year, and called on the Alliance to do its part in turning out a massive working families vote in November.

The Arizona ARA aims to organize retired union members and senior citizen organizations with community organizations that serve seniors. Their purpose is to fight back against the attacks on the right to health care, on Social Security, and on the education of our grandchildren. The Bush administration and its corporate bosses better beware of these young and energetic retirees!

The author can be reached at stelnik@webtv.net.

Labors Trumka takes Safeway picket nationwide

Fri, 23 Jan 2004 06:25:00 +0000

Launching a campaign to go nationwide and all-union with the Southern California grocery strike, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka met with representatives from 50 city and state labor councils in Washington Jan. 20. Trumka, who directs the federation’s strategic campaigns, is coming onboard to personally lead a campaign to spread the picketlines across the country in order to put major pressure on the supermarket chains, according to AFL-CIO spokesperson Sarah Massey.

“Anywhere Safeway has a major market, we will be there,” Massey told the World.

Besides “intense education” of Safeway shoppers, the campaign will also include attempt to persuade pension funds and other shareholders to take stands in the workers’ favor and to put pressure on supermarket executives and directors. The supermarkets have lost an estimated $1 billion in sales, but so far their stock prices are holding steady.

“The 13 million members of the AFL-CIO will do whatever it takes to make sure that these striking and locked out workers hold the line one day longer than their employers,” vowed Trumka.

On Jan. 21, a dozen ministers and union leaders crossed barricades and sat down in front of Safeway corporate regional headquarters in Arcadia, Calif., determined to be heard at a meeting of corporate executives, while a crowd of 500 strikers gathered outside. The entire group of sit-downers, which included California AFL-CIO head Art Pulaski, was arrested. “Affordable health care is a moral issue,” explained Rev. William Jarvis Johnson of Calvary C.M.E. Church.

In another sign of the labor movement’s recognition of the strike’s import, membership meetings of three Southern California locals of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have passed motions authorizing $25 additional dues payments from each member for six months to help pay the health care benefits of grocery strikers whose coverage expired Jan. 1. With that contribution, ILWU locals in Southern California will have raised and pledged more than $1 million dollars in support of the strike, including sizeable individual donations, according to the union’s Communications Director Steve Stallone.

Supermarket workers are in the 15th week of the strike and lockout. The key issue is the companies’ demand to shift $1 billion of health care costs to the employees with the establishment of a two-tier system that would eliminate health care coverage for new employees and de-fund benefits for current workers.

The author can be reached at rwood@pww.org.

Iowa caucuses show resolve to oust Bush

Fri, 23 Jan 2004 06:17:00 +0000

DES MOINES, Iowa – A near record 122,000 Iowans braved bitter cold here Jan. 19 to attend Democratic caucus meetings in a dramatic display of their determination to defeat George W. Bush Nov. 2. On the eve of the caucuses, four candidates were in a dead heat, spurring people to turn out in droves, especially youth and other first-time caucus-goers.

Churches, libraries, and public schools overflowed with enthusiastic, good-natured crowds, who applauded speeches assailing the war in Iraq, severe cutbacks in vital services at home, and the lack of health care.

In a stunning upset, Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) won 38 percent of the vote and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards won 32 percent. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, widely viewed as the frontrunner, came in third with 18 percent. Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri got only 11 percent and dropped out, appealing to his supporters to unite behind the ultimate Democratic nominee to defeat Bush.

The spirit of grassroots democracy was on display at the St. Charles Public Library in Madison County, about 35 miles south of Des Moines. Robert Bell, a grain farmer and chairman of the Madison County Democratic Party, surveyed the standing-room-only crowd.

“This is a bigger turnout than ever before by a long ways,” he told the World. “We had good candidates who worked hard to get their supporters out. The fact that it was hotly contested generated a lot of energy.”

Bell spoke of the congenial crowd munching cookies and sipping coffee as they talked politics. “These are our neighbors,” he said. “We respect each other. I think they will all stay on board and vote for the Democratic nominee in November.”

The Rev. Gil Dawes, a United Methodist minister, told the crowd he is backing Rep. Dennis Kucinich “because he has spoken out honestly against the war – against a tax cut that has gone to the wealthy and the Pentagon leaving the rest of us in a hole. It is time to put Iraq in the hands of the United Nations and move on.” Exits polls indicated that 70 percent of caucus participants oppose the war.

“We all know we have to get George W. Bush out of the White House,” Kelly Harlow, an Edwards organizer, said. “Edwards is the one who can beat Bush.”

Pharmacist Barry Hitt praised Dean. “He opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning. He’s been targeted because he worries the Bush crowd. They know he hits Bush in his soft spot. He can defeat him.”

The caucus then broke into groups and it became clear that Edwards was the big winner, with Kerry close behind. Kucinich, Dean and Gephardt all fell below the 15 percent needed for “viability.” During the “realignment” process allowed under Iowa caucus rules, all or most of them joined the Edwards group. Edwards ultimately got 67 votes (one of which is committed to Kucinich), an absolute majority of the 109 who attended the caucus.

Similarly, 310 people packed Plymouth Congregational Church in Des Moines for the 73rd precinct caucus. Jessica Ireland, 22, an organizer for the Iowa Peace Network, led a 19-member Kucinich delegation. Kerry backers numbered 122, Edwards 97, and Dean 66. During realignment, Ireland persuaded 12 of the Kucinich backers to join Edwards’ group. Ireland was named as a county delegate.

At Kerry headquarters Chuck Shelabarger, captain of the 88th precinct, was exulting over his candidate’s surge. “I always thought John has the best message and the best chance of defeating Bush,” he said. He pointed out that Kerry is a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran who founded Vietnam Veterans Against the War, in contrast to “chicken hawk” Bush.

“Kerry served courageously in Vietnam and then came back and even more courageously stood up and spoke out against the war,” Shelabarger said. “How do we tell the mother of the last man who dies in Iraq that her son died for a mistake? The best answer is to bring them home alive. We can’t take another four years of George W. Bush’s radical agenda. As a veteran, I don’t like our soldiers dying over there for a war that could have been avoided.”

On Jan. 18 a capacity crowd jammed the United Steelworkers Local 310 hall for a Gephardt rally. Local 310 member John Campbell was fired up. “We will unite behind whoever is running against Bush,” he said when asked what the Steelworkers would do if someone other than Gephardt won the nomination.

“As an African-American, as a union member, as a human being, I cannot tolerate another four years of Bush. I know what its like to be hungry, to be needy and to be in a hard fight.” Campbell said. “You don’t give up until it’s over!”

The author can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

Whats wrong with no-match letters

Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:17:00 +0000

Opinion

Last week, President Bush announced a vague plan to deal with the 8 to 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. The plan has been denounced because it fails to guarantee what SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina calls “a new road to citizenship” for the undocumented. Juan Salgado, president of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights in Chicago, said, “It appears President Bush wants our sweat, our work, and our taxes ... but we can leave our families and our vote in Mexico.”

Meanwhile, undocumented immigrant workers are being hammered hard by the Bush administration. Over the past year and a half, hundreds of thousands of “no-match” letters covering millions of employees have been sent by the Social Security Administration. These letters inform employers that the Social Security numbers they have submitted with employee paperwork do not match SSA records. This is being done supposedly to assure that Social Security checks go to the right people (the amount of Social Security money involved in accounts with problem SS numbers is now over $50 billion). But a new national study shows that these letters are ineffective and, worse, are being abused by employers for anti-immigrant and even union-busting purposes.

The study was directed by Chirag Mehta and Nik Theodore of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and Marielena Hincapie of the National Immigration Law Center. It looked at the effectiveness of no-match letters in clearing up Social Security records, and their impact on workers, especially immigrants. The research relied on the cooperation of a large number of unions, churches and immigrants’ rights organizations over the summer of 2003.

Employers have generally assumed that any employee for whom a no-match letter is received is undocumented, which is often, though not always, indeed the case. Though later editions of the letter, modified under pressure from unions and immigrants’ rights groups, have clarified that the employer is not supposed to take any “adverse action” against the employee, many employers have done just that, throwing immigrant communities into a crisis.

Many employers have summarily fired such employees, or have given them impossible deadlines to come up with “a new Social Security number.” The fired employee is sometimes rehired at lower pay, stripped of seniority or benefits or both. These firings are motivated by a combination of fear by employers that they will be punished for hiring the undocumented, and a desire to maximize profits.

In 21 percent of the cases studied, employees stated that no-match letters were used to sanction or threaten workers who were involved in union activities in 25 percent of the cases, workers who had spoken up about conditions on the job were sanctioned. A California supermarket worker charged that during a unionization drive, “The market fired 60 workers, all immigrants. ... The management used these letters only against workers who were pro-union, and not those workers who were pro-company.”

Yet in some cases, when employees did not cooperate with demands of the employers, nothing happened to them. (Information from other sources suggests that when employees, their union or friendly community forces put pressure on companies, they often back off on firing people because of a no-match letter.)

No-match letters turn out to be an ineffective way of clarifying Social Security records. Thus far, no-match letters have been credited in clearing up only 2 percent of the records that have been straightened out, and there are other methods that are more effective. Mehta, Theodore and Hincapie conclude that the no-match letters have become a de facto immigrant enforcement mechanism, which they were neither designed nor legally mandated to be. Workers fired because of no-match letters do not leave the country, but are simply recycled through the labor market at lower wages and working conditions, catalyzing “a policy-induced churning in local labor markets as workers are either fired or quit their jobs only to join the overcrowded pool of workers vying for positions in traditional immigrant occupations.” This undercuts the position of all workers.

Superficially, the type of guest worker program proposed by President Bush would “solve” this problem by giving immigrant workers – in the shaky eventuality that they qualify for the program – temporary identification documents. However, these will come at a price: the Bush plan by no means guarantees continued authorization to remain and work in the U.S., and at the same time it forces undocumented workers to come forward and put themselves into the hands of the very authorities who may decide to deport them. In this, it resembles the “special registration” plan recently inflicted on persons from Muslim countries living in the U.S., which proved to be such a catastrophe due to the thousands who came forward to try to comply with the program, only to be thrown into jail and then out of the country.

Emile Schepers is an activist in Chicago. He can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Sports, politics, and organizing

Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:07:00 +0000

Opinion

The review of Lester Rodney’s book, “Press Box Red,” (PWW 11/22-28/03) evoked memories.

I was a high schooler when I was invited to participate in two activities sponsored by the New Haven, Conn., Young Communist League, although I was not a member at the time.

One was the very well known Unity Players, an interracial drama group that had previously conducted a civil liberties campaign in order to mount the play “Waiting for Lefty,” by Clifford Odets. It won the Yale University State Drama Tournament. The production I was involved in was “Plant in the Sun,” modeled after the sit-down strikes in Michigan auto factories. We also won the award for the performance.

The other activity was the New Haven Redwings basketball team, an outstanding interracial group that won the City Championship. We traveled Connecticut, compiling an impressive record.

When I joined the YCL, we embarked on the campaign to desegregate baseball. Not only were the major leagues segregated, but the semi-pros in Connecticut were as well. Connecticut’s semi-pro league was flourishing, drawing large and enthusiastic crowds. George Fitch was an outstanding African American athlete in Connecticut. We carried the petitions that were distributed nationally, but we added to our campaign, centering it upon Fitch. Like elsewhere, we collected thousands of signatures, but we did not win.

The CIO was growing rapidly in Connecticut, a center of machine tool and brass industries. We helped in the organizing, reaching out to young workers. The corporations had a program of fielding basketball and baseball teams, actually recruiting athletes. They also organized bowling tournaments. This was, of course, to develop loyalty to the company. We decided that labor had to have its own athletic program. I became the organizer for the Connecticut CIO Youth and Sports Association. We set up shop in the “Brass Valley” – Ansonia, and organized baseball tournaments and bowling teams. Unfortunately the outbreak of World War II aborted the program.

I had several opportunities to use the experience I had accumulated. When World War II ended, I was with the Third Army in Germany, writing a sports column for the Army newspaper. There were many major league and college athletes in the service. I convinced the Army brass that we should bring all that talent together into a league. I was assigned the responsibility.

I was carried away with the spirit of the project. I thought it would be interesting if we could introduce baseball to the German children so I organized a three-day school for children. Famous ball players were brought to the school to teach the game. It was a total failure. The children started to kick the baseballs, like soccer balls, and when they realized the balls would not respond, one by one the children dropped out. It was a lesson for me of how sensitive one must be to cultural differences.

Another opportunity was quite recent. While organizing a seminar of mayors to participate in the Hague Conference for Peace at The Hague, Netherlands, I became acquainted with the leadership of Athletes for Peace. This is the organization of Olympic and professional athletes who opposed the Vietnam War. I learned they were conducting a program in Oakland, Calif., involving high school basketball players. I proposed they organize a team of all-stars that would participate in a round-robin at The Hague that I would organize. I reached out to the leadership of the municipality of The Hague, who welcomed the suggestion. They would provide the facility; organize Dutch teams; and publicize the event, inviting the community. UNICEF became very interested in this attempt to bring athletics to a Conference of Peace. It was a resounding success. The athletes were greeted enthusiastically by the youth attending the conference, and by the community. The games were played in a spirit of peaceful competition minus the usual rough play that characterizes so much of the play today. You can imagine the look of amazement on the faces of all the athletes when the master of ceremonies introduced a white-haired senior as the organizer of the games.

There is an injunction, “Man does not live by bread alone.” It still serves as a good organizing guide.

Al Marder is a peace activist in Connecticut. He can be reached at amistad.nai@rcn.com.

Hey, Where did Wal-Mart come from?

Fri, 16 Jan 2004 08:02:00 +0000

Wal-Mart is practically synonymous with “cheaper labor.” Its U.S. clerks averaged $13,861 a year in 2001, some $800 below the miserable federal poverty line for a three-person household. Its subcontractors are infamous for their mistreatment of workers in the U.S. and worldwide.

Forty years ago, Wal-Mart had one store, in Rogers, Ark. Today it is the world’s biggest corporation, with 5,000 outlets worldwide. How did this happen? Isn’t the capitalist system irreversibly monopolized?

An examination of the extraordinary rise of Japanese and southern Korean industry after World War II can shed light on Wal-Mart’s emergence. It is the focus of this column, the first of two installments.

Like Wal-Mart, neither Japanese auto giant Honda nor Korean steelmaker Posco, to take but two examples, even existed 60 years ago. Japan and southern Korea emerged from World War II devastated, with Japan under U.S. military occupation. Honda would not incorporate until 1948. Posco would not emerge until the 1960s. Yet by 1980, Honda, Nissan and Toyota were among the world’s largest corporations, and auto imports claimed 25 percent of the U.S. auto market, up from less than 5 percent in 1955.

Today, Posco is a major force in steel. Steel imports accounted for nearly as large a share of the U.S. market as auto imports. How did Honda, Posco and similar giants, such as Toyota or Samsung, arise?

To competitively manufacture steel or automatic transmissions, it is necessary to have access to technology, capital – and ultimately to the world’s largest market, the U.S.

Analyzing the rise of Japanese industry, the Wall Street Journal pointed out in 1981 that “the Japanese [have] had ready access to American industrial know-how. In fact, much of their present industrial sophistication is based on U.S. technology.” To be sure, that technology was not transferred freely. Japanese corporations paid out $300 million in royalties in 1980 alone. That would indicate that U.S. capitalists had at least some interest in Japan’s production.

But in addition, there also was significant, if little publicized, direct U.S. ownership. GM, for example, has long owned shares in “Japanese” vehicle makers Isuzu, Suzuki (and now Subaru as well, not to mention Saab and Fiat in Europe). Ford owns much of Mazda.

The “Japanese miracle” does not stop there. An examination of Japanese corporations’ balance sheets finds them up to their ears in debt since the end of World War II. Considering Japan’s (and Europe’s) devastation in the war, and the overwhelming concentration of capital in the U.S., it is not difficult to guess who was lending to Honda, Toyota, Nippon Steel, etc.

By 1982, Japanese industrial corporations were among the world’s largest. Even then, U.S. banks directly accounted for 60 percent of a billion-dollar expansion loan to the Japanese steel industry that year, and probably indirectly accounted for most of the remainder. (About $133 million of that loan came from Steelworker union pension funds managed by Mellon Bank!) Similarly, the real source of the South Korean “economic miracle” has been massive loans from the U.S., as Korea historian Bruce Cumings has pointed out.

Between royalties and especially debt, the profit rates of Japanese and Korean manufacturers for decades have consistently been a fraction – sometimes as little as one-tenth – the profit rates of U.S. industrials. In 2002, those Japanese industrials reported combined losses.

So, while there was little investment in the U.S. steel industry through the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, there was considerable Wall Street-financed expansion of industry in Japan and South Korea. Without a doubt, one big part of that was to protect against the advance of socialist revolution in Asia.

The tightly-guarded U.S. market, the largest and most profitable in the world, was opened to imports of steel, auto, rubber and other products from Japan, South Korea, and other nations. And this in turn helped rip the ground from under the Steelworkers, Autoworkers, Rubberworkers and other unions in the U.S., and led to the cheapening of labor.

The “miraculous” rebirth of Japanese and South Korean industries turns out not to be such a miracle after all. Behind it we can find Wall Street’s and Washington’s unending efforts to cheapen labor and fend off revolution. This can help us understand Wal-Mart’s extraordinary rise, the focus of this column’s next installment.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org.

This Week In Labor

Fri, 16 Jan 2004 07:56:00 +0000

Anti-immigrant ads pollute airwaves

It’s fertile conditions when economic times are bad to have someone to blame besides your rotten employer, said Iowa AFL-CIO president Mark Smith about anti-immigrant political ads that have been appearing on Iowa TV and radio stations. According to the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, the ads try to pit workers against workers in an attempt to change presidential candidates’ positions on immigrant workers in the U.S. before the state’s caucuses.

In the ads, the narrator talks about foreign workers dragging down wages and taking jobs away from Iowans, illustrated by an image of a fist hitting a punching bag, printed with a human face. The ads are financed by “Coalition for the Future American Worker,” the creation of the nation’s two largest anti-immigrant organizations, Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, and Americans for Immigration Control.

Smith has called on the stations to pull the ads. “Racism is always a nifty tool for people who have money, for people who find it advantageous to have workers at each others throats,” he told the World. “These ads play to some poor guy who has lost his job, he said or bunches who are afraid they will lose theirs. It takes the onus off the government for their crappy trade treaties.”

Workers cross Borders,win union contract

Workers at Borders Books flagship store in Ann Arbor, Mich., ratified a two-year contract by a vote of 20-12 after a hard-fought strike. The contract provides wage increases of 25 cents an hour, a minimum three percent annual raise and removal of wage caps for long-time employees as well as a grievance procedure and an end to the workers’ “at will” status. The bookstore employees voted to join United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 876 on Dec. 6, 2002, by a resounding 51-4 vote.

According to the Borders Books Employees’ website, the Borders Union campaign is “an employee-driven grass-roots movement, facilitated in ground-breaking ways by the Internet.” Thirteen stores across the country have had union votes, and a dozen others have had “serious” union drives, but all have been countered by an aggressive anti-union campaign, leaving only the Ann Arbor store and the Minneapolis Borders with union representation.

Nissan workers seek union

Pro-union Nissan workers in Smyrna, Tenn., filed hundreds of cards gathered from among their 4,000 fellow workers asking for a National Labor Relations Board-supervised union representation election. They seek representation from the United Auto Workers at their plant here. The NLRB is expected to take at least six weeks to process the request, with appeals likely to drag out the process for months. Nissan, like other foreign-owned “transplants,” has been a tough nut for union workers to crack. A representation election was lost in 1989, and drives in 1997 and 2003 did not come to votes. Workplace safety seems to be a driving issue this time. Nissan rank-and-file worker Tracy Shadix told the Car Connection, “I’ve seen too many workers injured and too many injured workers mistreated. We need a union.”

Labor Secretary offers tips to bosses

As if to prove labor’s contention that the U.S. Labor Secretary is not much of a friend of labor, Elaine Chao is taking the initiative to suggest to employers ways they can take full advantage of her department’s new overtime regulations to keep down the wages of low-paid workers, according to a report from Associated Press.

In one ploy suggested by the Department of Labor, employers who regularly work their employees long hours can cut their hourly rate and add the overtime to equal the original salary. Another suggested gambit is to raise the employee’s salary just over the $22,100 threshold, making him or her a potential member of management and thus ineligible for overtime pay.

Striking grocery workers salute Dr. King

A “Grocery Worker Support Rally” has been called by a grouping of activists and churches in South Los Angeles to commemorate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King on the celebration of his birthday, Jan. 19. The rally will be held at the Albertsons store at the corner of MLK and Crenshaw in Los Angeles.

This Week in Labor was compiled by Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org)

SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS Behind the handshakes lies resistance

Fri, 16 Jan 2004 07:10:00 +0000

George W. Bush’s handlers tried to prepare a soft-landing for him during his Jan. 12-13 trip to Monterrey, Mexico, but they failed. The announcement of a new immigration proposal was mainly geared for the 2004 elections, but the timing of the announcement was planned to smooth over rough relations between the U.S. and Latin America, in particular with the host of the Special Summit of the Americas, Mexican President Vicente Fox.

After months of frosty relations stemming from differences on Iraq, immigration, and the execution of Mexican citizens, the immigration proposal and an invitation to Bush’s Crawford ranch was warmly welcomed by Fox. But regional resistance to the U.S. agenda, which included pushing for a deadline on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), attacking left-wing governments and further seeking to isolate Cuba, was united and strong.

Bush sought to put a 2005 deadline for the FTAA into the final document, but in the end none appeared. Bush also called for banning “corrupt” governments from future summits, a mildly veiled threat against left-leaning governments in the region, in particular Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia and Haiti. No such language appears in the final declaration.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stole the show when he spoke about the need for a “new moral architecture” that “favors the weakest.” Advocating stronger cooperation within Latin America before any trade agreements are signed with the U.S., Chavez said the current economic model of “neo-liberal” policies is an “infernal machine that produces more poor people each minute.”

Chavez hailed the policies of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as “courageous.” He said that the U.S. didn’t escape the Great Depression with initiatives like free trade and privatization, but through the New Deal, a far-reaching economic and social program that created public-works jobs, legalized unions, helped farmers, artists, youth, and helped break down some forms of racist discrimination. Chavez called for a humanitarian fund that could be used to help countries during financial and natural disasters. The declaration said countries would consider the proposal.

Associated Press reported that as Chavez spoke Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva nodded and smiled enthusiastically while Bush leaned tiredly on his hand.

Bush was challenged on his argument that “free trade” leads to prosperity for all. Even Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, who sought to improve relations with the Bush administration, said that developing countries are at an unfair advantage with the U.S.

Brazil, an economic power in the region, has considerable influence in these summits and it advocates fair trade, which favors people’s needs not corporate profits. President da Silva said, “It’s time to act once and for all in the collective and primary interests of all of the Americas.” Brazil is also protesting discriminatory U.S. security measures that require the fingerprinting and photographing of foreigners arriving in the United States. Brazil now requires reciprocal measures against American citizens traveling to Brazil.

While excluded from the summit, Cuba was a topic of discussion there.

Part of the Bush speech attacked socialist Cuba and its president, Fidel Castro. Days before the summit, Bush official Roger Noriega launched an anti-Cuba offensive designed to weaken the region’s left-wing governments and movements as well as isolate Cuba. Argentina called for a formal apology from the U.S. after Noriega said the Bush administration was “concerned” about the ties between Cuba and Argentina. Similarly Venezuela defended its relations with Cuba and expressed sympathy for the Cuban people who have endured almost half a century of U.S. “tyranny.” The U.S. government has a long history of overthrowing governments and destabilizing countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Cuban newspaper Granma published an editorial, “The Empire’s Fears, Lies, and Inanities,” pointing out that Cuba has relations with many Latin American and Caribbean governments and movements, which are all public and legal. Challenging the idea that Cuba “destabilizes” countries, the editorial asks, “Could it be that destabilize means sending 15,000 Cuban doctors to 64 countries where millions of people are given medical care and tens of thousands of lives are saved?”

The Summit’s “Declaration of Nuevo Leon” states, “We reiterate that among the principal causes of instability in the region are poverty, inequality, and social exclusion, which we must confront comprehensively and urgently.”

The author can be reached at talbano@pww.org.

Missouri Unions, students confront Bush

Fri, 16 Jan 2004 06:22:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS – Seven hundred union members, community leaders and student activists rallied outside of the America’s Center, Jan. 5, against President Bush’s overtime proposals as the president raised $2.8 million from wealthy Republican contributors – the single largest one-night fundraising total in Missouri history.

According to the local news, the president spoke for 17 minutes and mingled with contributors for 10 minutes, raising around $76,000 per minute from over 1,000 Bush supporters.

Mike Dalton, an organizer for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 2000, told the World, “President Bush is trying to steal overtime from our members. He is taking money from working families and giving it to his rich buddies. He is spending billions of dollars in Iraq when our state budgets are in crisis.”

Dalton, who represents state mental health professionals, has seen first-hand the effects of Bush’s handling of the economy. “Many of our state employees have only received one raise in the past four years, but caseloads continue to increase,” he said. “Because of increased caseloads, many mental health professionals are unable to provide the type of patient care that they would like to.”

St. Louis area Jobs with Justice organizer Lara Granich told the World, “Overtime isn’t just a labor issue. It is a community issue. It is an issue that concerns all of us. Overtime pay keeps many working families from having to choose between paying rent or buying groceries.” While the main focus of the protest was administration attacks on overtime pay, many protesters were also concerned about Bush’s chances of winning Missouri in the 2004 elections.

John Hickey, of Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition, told the World, “Tonight’s turnout shows that Missourians are beginning to understand Bush’s policies are not for working families. Pro-Vote and all of our coalition partners are going to focus on building for November.”

Missouri Pro-Vote has registered 18,000 new voters and plans to register an additional 40,000 before the elections. Hickey added, “Missouri is a critical state. Bush won Missouri during the 2000 elections. It will be very difficult for any Democratic candidate to carry the nation without winning Missouri in 2004.”

Nationally, the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME and dozens of other unions are devoting resources and personnel to voter registration projects in Missouri.

Some protesters carried signs denouncing Bush’s war on Iraq and called for immediate U.S. military withdrawal.

The author can be reached at tonypec@pww.org.

Apollo Project would create 3.3 million jobs

Fri, 16 Jan 2004 06:12:00 +0000

WASHINGTON – Environmental, labor, and civil rights organizations convened a National Press Club news conference Jan. 14 to denounce Bush-Cheney energy policies – blocked by a Senate filibuster last month – as a giveaway to oil and gas polluters and a destroyer of jobs.

They also unveiled a new 10-year, $300 billion “Apollo Project” that would create 3.3 million new jobs while cleaning up the nation’s air, water, and soil, and reducing U.S. reliance on imported energy.

Initiated by the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF), the Apollo Project has been endorsed by 17 labor unions, including the United Steelworkers of America, the United Auto Workers, as well as by the Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Greenpeace.

CAF founder Robert Borosage hailed the “unusual, broad-based alliance of unions, environmental and civil rights groups” that have endorsed the project.

United Steelworker President Leo Gerard quipped that rather than send American youth to secure oil for U.S. corporations in the Middle East “we should be working to make sure that millions of workers have jobs in the Midwest.”

Gerard said that only 1,000 new jobs were created in December instead of the 150,000 George W. Bush had expected, according to the latest Labor Department employment report on Jan. 9. “The unemployment rate fell by two-tenths of a percent only because 300,000 workers stopped looking for jobs,” Gerard said. “I want the jobless rate to go down because workers have found jobs.”

According to the report, another 26,000 factory workers lost their jobs in December. “That makes 41 consecutive months of job loss in manufacturing,” Gerard said. “My union has lost close to 100,000 jobs since 1997. Those jobs went to Mexico and China. There is no reason that American industry can’t manufacture the products that will bring those jobs home.”

“From now until the presidential election,” Gerard added, “this is an issue we will talk to every candidate about. We need to have a tool to revitalize manufacturing.” Every candidate, he said, should endorse the Apollo Project.

Released at the news conference was a 34-page report, “New Energy for America … The Apollo Jobs Report: Good Jobs and Energy Independence” (www.apolloalliance.org).

It outlines a bold 10-year plan to overhaul the nation’s electricity grid “held together by baling wire and string” and to shift the nation toward energy-efficient mass transit. Investing $49 billion to increase energy diversity would add $414.9 billion in Gross Domestic Product, add $278.7 billion in personal income and create 932,095 jobs, the report states.

A 10-year federal investment of $42 billion in developing more efficient manufacturing would add $341 billion in GDP, $222.9 billion in personal income and create 741,912 new jobs, the report predicted.

Likewise, an $11.5 billion federal investment in water infrastructure would add $28.9 billion to GDP, $19.5 billion in new personal income and create 62,586 jobs.

Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) issued a statement in support of the plan, saying, “One of the keys to America’s energy security – and therefore our national security – lies in rebuilding our cities. We need strategic investments to retrofit old buildings, expand transportation alternatives, restore our infrastructure, and create solar, wind and hydrogen technology. Apollo will rebuild our country in a way that benefits all Americans.” The jobs program stresses investment in the nation’s cities and infrastructure.

Economist Ray Perryman of the Perryman Group based in Waco, Texas, released at the news conference his study of the Apollo Project. Perryman cited the 41 months of contraction in manufacturing as proof “the U.S. is way behind in investment in job-creating programs. The Apollo Project can stimulate jobs in manufacturing. I have great respect for markets for organizing production and distribution. But they are not perfect. We need the public sector to build and maintain the infrastructure.”

Carl Pope, president of the Sierra Club, contrasted the open grassroots input of the Apollo Project to Vice President Cheney’s secret energy task force. “It produced a plan so broadly horrendous, so profoundly irrelevant that the Wall Street Journal, The Nation, the Cato Institute and the Sierra Club all called on Congress to reject it,” Pope said. “Our politicians … have not wanted to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. They do not want to abide by the Kyoto Agreement on reduction of greenhouse gases. And I doubt if Bush will find enough oil under the surface of Mars to end our dependence on Persian Gulf oil.”

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), speaking by telephone, said she was proud to filibuster the Bush-Cheney energy bill. The report, she said, “has put real numbers on the table and should be a wakeup call to the president and my colleagues in Congress. Our generation’s challenge is not to put a man on the moon but rather it is to end U.S. energy dependence and create jobs for millions of workers. We need to put together a legislative roadmap to accomplish it.”

The author can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com.

Iowa labor leader urges unity against Bush

Fri, 16 Jan 2004 06:02:00 +0000

On the eve of the Jan. 19 Iowa caucuses, the first major test of the 2004 elections, Iowa AFL-CIO President Mark Smith warned against disunity in the battle to defeat George W. Bush next November.

“Most people know who the real enemy is,” he told the World in a telephone interview from his office in Des Moines. “Beat George W. Bush in November! That is the biggest applause line for any of the candidates no matter who you are talking to.”

The caucuses will draw tens of thousands of Iowa farmers, workers, homemakers, students and senior citizens to meetings in private homes, schools, churches, and libraries next Monday night to debate the issues and choose Democratic convention delegates committed to the various candidates. Smith said union members and their families will account for one-fourth to one-third of the delegates at the caucus meetings. Howard Dean and Rep. Richard Gephardt, both with impressive backing from Iowa labor unions, are in a dead heat, he said.

But occasionally the campaign has been “down and dirty,” with several of Dean’s rivals attacking him in a desperate attempt to undermine his front-runner status. It reached a low point in December when a secretive Ohio-based outfit, Americans for Jobs, Healthcare and Progressive Values (AJHPV), briefly ran attack ads in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina using a picture of Osama bin Laden to smear Dean as weak on national security.

The Dean campaign denounced the ad as “despicable” and demanded that AJHPV identify the donors who paid for the ad. It ran on the same channels with an attack ad by the Republican “Club for Growth,” which also hammered Dean. AJHPV refused to say who paid for the ad. But the group’s treasurer, David Jones, has been a Gephardt fundraiser.

Several unions that had contributed to AJHPV announced they were withdrawing support for the ads. Another AJHPV official is a former press spokesman for the John Kerry campaign.

This infighting among the Democratic contenders is seen as a threat to the unity essential to oust Bush if it is not nipped in the bud. In the early debates, the Democrats maintained discipline in not attacking each other, instead directing all their fire at Bush.

The fact that labor is backing several different candidates “dilutes our message,” Smith continued. “We get wrapped up in the competition between the various candidates. But the underlying view that unites us is that Bush is dangerous as hell and must be defeated. It will take some time for the wounds to heal, but I am confident that labor will be united behind whichever candidate is chosen to challenge Bush.”

Iowa, with a jobless rate of about 4 percent, is not as hard-hit economically as other states, he said. He described the people as “anxious” over job security, farm income, pensions, and health care.

“We know that direct spending for projects like school construction and repair is three times more effective in creating jobs than tax cuts,” Smith said. “Bush calls himself a ‘compassionate conservative.’ But we call him a ‘callous conservative.’ He may not be responsible for the economic downturn. But he is responsible for refusing to respond to the downturn, for trickle-down economic policies that reward the rich.”

The war on Iraq continues to sharply divide the Democratic candidates, with Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) pointing out that he played a key role in mobilizing 136 House members to vote against the Iraq war resolution and Rev. Al Sharpton and former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun also stressing their opposition to the war. Dean has made his stand against the war his main rallying cry. It has put Gephardt, and Senators John Kerry (Mass.), and John Edwards (N.C.) on the defensive, pleading with Iowa voters who pepper them with angry questions on why they voted to go to war.

Smith was an early opponent of the war in Iraq. “Bush lied. There were no weapons of mass destruction,” he said. Six months ago, those who questioned the war may have felt out of the mainstream. “Now the former treasury secretary is calling Bush a liar,” he said, referring to the explosive book, “The Price of Loyalty,” by Ron Suskind. “This policy of preventive war is B.S. It’s like someone walks in my office and I shoot him because I think he might shoot me. It’s crazy,” Smith said.

Actually, the primary election in Washington, D.C., predated the Iowa caucuses by six days. Dean was winning with 42 percent of the vote. Sharpton was close behind with 35 percent and Braun trailed with 12 percent. Rep. Kucinich observed that primary by introducing a bill in Congress to make the District of Columbia the 51st state.

The author can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com.

Immigration plan chains workers

Fri, 16 Jan 2004 05:48:00 +0000

The “more compassionate” immigration system for undocumented workers proposed by President George W. Bush on Jan. 7 will grant corporations greater ability to pit U.S. workers against the global work force for domestic jobs, say labor and immigrant rights leaders. It will also help businesses further exploit undocumented workers.

Bush is proposing a massive temporary worker program that will match “willing foreign workers with willing American employers.”

The program, which will be administered by the Department of Homeland Security, establishes a three-year temporary worker visa for which both employed undocumented immigrants and foreign workers with job offers can apply. “Participants who do not remain employed, who do not follow the rules, or who break the law will not be eligible for continued participation and will be required to return to their home,” Bush said.

But AFL-CIO President John Sweeney pointed out that the program will “serve large corporations’ needs over those of immigrant workers and their families.” Sweeney said the proposal “creates a permanent underclass of workers … (and) deepens the potential for abuse and exploitation of these workers.” It would “formalize an even larger class of workers accorded only second-tier status in American workplaces and will exacerbate the decline in job quality and job security for all workers,” he said.

Rep. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) called the temporary worker program “a rotation of human capital, to be used and discarded, with no hope of permanently legalizing one’s status.”

Bush said employers “must make every reasonable effort to find an American worker for the job at hand.” He promised that “the government will develop a quick and simple system for employers to search for American workers,” and says the new temporary worker system “should be clear and efficient, so employers are able to find workers quickly and simply.” Undocumented workers will have to pay a “one-time fee” to be eligible for consideration. Workers recruited abroad apparently will not have to pay a fee.

Laborers Union President Terence O’Sullivan told the Workday Minnesota news service that Bush is proposing to “chain a worker to an employer and claim to protect human rights.” Chaining workers to employers, he added, “protects corporations and employers … but leaves workers themselves vulnerable and beholden to those employers for the right to stay here.”

The program, said Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, appears to offer the business community full access to the immigrant workers it needs while providing very little to the workers themselves.” And because these workers would be vulnerable during their temporary status and even more vulnerable when it expires, “the program would have a negative impact on the wages and working conditions for their U.S.-born co-workers” as well.

The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium said in a statement that Bush’s proposal fails to provide a reasonable and timely path to lawful permanent residence. “It is unrealistic to expect people to come out of the shadows and become fully integrated members of our community and economy if they know that they will be forced to leave everything behind when their period of stay under the program ends,” said NAPALC member Phil Y. Ting.

Bush’s temporary labor program has predecessors in the form of indentured servitude, contract labor, and coolie labor systems of past centuries. The Bracero Program, begun during World War II, brought temporary Mexican workers in to augment crop harvesting for agribusiness in the Southwest. Business forces greatly expanded the program after the war.

Government and business colluded to undermine labor rights of citizens, green card holders, bracero sand undocumented workers with the Bracero Program, pitting all against each other, according to Ernesto Galarza, who helped organize the Mexican-American/Labor alliance that won its repeal in the early ’60s.

Galarza’s book, “Merchants of Labor,” describes how the bracero workforce grew from 4,203 in 1942 to nearly 300,000 in 1959. Many braceros found that working without documents was more advantageous, so as the program grew, so did the number of undocumented workers. The government responded with increased deportations, which rose from 5,100 in 1942 to over 1 million in 1954 during the racist program the government called “Operation Wetback.”

The multi-tiered system fostered the continued growth of agribusiness over the family farm, prevented successful union organizing, and sharply reduced the number of citizens in the farm labor work force.

The Bush proposal will create a temporary work program on a scale potentially far broader and deeper than the Bracero Program. Undocumented workers are found in almost every job description that exists, professional, skilled, unskilled, and in every region of the country. According to the Bush statement, undocumented workers will be eligible to apply for permits for the jobs they now have, workers in other countries, perhaps now employed by U.S. global corporations, will also be able to seek invitation to such jobs.

The author can be reached at rosalio_munoz@sbcglobal.net.

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