People Before Profit blog

A destructive solution to Americas health care crisis

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:52:00 +0000

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has introduced legislation, the Healthy Americans Act (HAA), that purports to guarantee “universal, private health insurance for all Americans.” He has garnered support for this legislation from Andy Stern, president of SEIU and founder of the Change to Win Coalition, as well as Ron Pollack of Families USA and Steve Burd, CEO of Safeway.

The HAA is, in fact, one of the most radically destructive proposals ever put forward to address the failings of the American health care system.

It would eliminate the system of employer-based health insurance on which more than 90 percent of the insured depend today and replace it with a system of individually-purchased private insurance overseen by new state-based “health help agencies.” For the first two years after the program went into effect, employers who now provide insurance would be obligated to add those funds to their employees’ wages. After that, this obligation would end, though all employers would be required to pay “shared responsibility payments” to the federal government to help subsidize premium payments for low-income individuals. All of us would be required to purchase private insurance, with subsidies scaled to our income level.

No regulation of the private health insurance industry is proposed. Instead, according to literature from Wyden’s office, “the Healthy Americans Act relies on competition to drive down costs and promote quality.” Nothing in the plan would make competition among the private insurers work any better than it has in the past. In fact, the standardization of plans envisioned in the HAA might well lead to even further concentration in an already highly concentrated industry where two corporations, United Health and Wellpoint, dominate the market across the country.

Why should those millions of Americans who now receive insurance from their employers, including the members of labor unions which fought for decades for those benefits, be willing to give up this coverage for the uncertainties and inequities of the private for-profit insurance market? In the face of continuing increases in the cost of health care exceeding general inflation as well as the growth in average wages, why should workers want to take over responsibility for paying for their health care?

Andy Stern, one of the supporters of this plan, has asserted that the employer-based insurance system is “collapsing,” but he has identified the wrong culprit. It is not the employer base that is collapsing, it is the entire system of private insurance which is becoming increasingly unaffordable as it reveals itself incapable of stemming the rising cost of health care or assuring access for everyone. Not only can the complex, fragmented, wasteful and unreliable health insurance industry not control the cost of care; numerous studies have shown that it adds 30 percent or more to the cost of care through unnecessary and duplicative billing, marketing and administrative costs.

Instead of moving backwards to a time before there was employer-based insurance, when everyone was on their own to get health care, we should be moving forward to recognize health care as a necessary public good that should be a public responsibility. We should be expanding and improving the Medicare program, which we know provides reliable, cost-effective coverage for millions of Americans today and has been doing so for more than 40 years. Publicly administered Medicare for All, not private for-profit insurance, is the only path forward if we want a system that will truly create healthy Americans.

Len Rodberg is research director, N.Y. Metro Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Worlds biggest hog boss meets its match: Smithfield workers take on global Goliath

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:17:00 +0000

Jim Adams started at Smithfield Packing on the hog kill floor assembly line. He was hurt on his first day, and by the time his second shift ended he knew he’d better keep his mouth shut and try to ignore the pain if he wanted to keep his job.

During his first few months he kept getting hurt, until after eight months he tore the cartilage in his right knee, slipped and fell on a blade and slashed his arm and hand through the tendons.

The emergency room doctors and his personal physician said the injury was due to his job, but Smithfield denied him worker’s compensation. He had to take unpaid leave to have two surgeries. His leave time ran out before a third scheduled operation and the company fired him.

“This hand is useless,” he said while describing his predicament during a phone conversation with him in January. “I am the only breadwinner for my family — three boys, a wife — and I owe $40,000 in medical bills. I can’t afford the third operation.”

Injury a byproduct from 8 million hogs a year

The Jim Adams story is common at the world’s largest hog slaughterhouse and pork processing plant — Smithfield Packing in Tar Heel, N.C.

More than 5,000 workers there kill and process 8 million hogs every year. Working conditions are notoriously tough at hog slaughterhouses, but at Smithfield’s Tar Heel plant the assembly line speeds are so fast that they make working conditions brutal and lead to disabling injuries.

There is a history of abuse at the Tar Heel plant. Human Rights Watch, a respected international organization, has cited Smithfield Packing for violating international human rights standards and for retaliating against those who report their injuries. The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Smithfield violated labor law by using threats, intimidation and violence against workers who tried to organize a union.

Management pushes racism, sexual harassment

There is ample evidence that the company is creating racial tension among white, African American, Native American and immigrant workers. Jim Adams said that a supervisor told him, “The union won’t ever get approved because we know how to turn Blacks against the Mexicans and the Mexicans against Blacks.”

Ronnie Ann Simmons, who has worked for Smithfield for 10 years, told a reporter for Working America last December that she’ll never forget the violence she witnessed during the union certification vote.

“When we had the vote for the union, you had to fight to get in,” she said. “Once you got in, it was crazy. Supervisors were hollering racial slurs, the police were everywhere, it was ugly. They were shoving and beating people and laughing about it — all because we wanted our rights.”

Sexually harassed by management at Smithfield, then fired after missing work for medical reasons, Denise Walker told the Justice at Smithfield web site that no matter what the injury, illness or dangerous conditions, management doesn’t care.

“One time I was inside the building and the plant was on fire,” Walker said. “They had us still in there working.

“I’m only 23, but my hands are hurt pretty bad. When I worked at Smithfield, I hurt my hands as well as my back, developed pneumonia, and had a miscarriage from standing too long on the job. I also had to deal with sexual harassment from the managers; they could touch you and make nasty comments, and there wasn’t nothing you could do unless you wanted to lose your job,” she said.

“I had so many health problems from working there that they took away my disability and finally fired me for missing work, even though I was in the hospital at the time.”

Unions make a difference

Smithfield’s workers first came to the United Food and Commercial Workers in 1994 seeking a voice on the job.

During each of the two subsequent elections for the union, Smithfield harassed, threatened and spied on workers suspected of supporting the union. In each of the elections the workers narrowly lost the right to be represented by the UFCW.

The situation at unionized meat processing and packaging plants is much different than the one that exists at Tar Heel.

Union plants, including some Smithfield plants in Iowa and South Dakota, have safety committees and workers have a union contract with decent wages and benefits.

Union plants are profitable and can generate millions of dollars for local economies, providing jobs and a stable tax base for public education, health care, safety and other vital services in the community.

Documented abuse

Detailed documentation of abuse at Smithfield’s Tar Heel plant can be found in two reports issued by Human Rights Watch. One is titled “Unfair Advantage” and the other “Blood, Sweat and Fear.”

Only one of such abuses of power was the formation by Smithfield of an armed security squad that roamed the plant and arrested workers on the site. Public outcry in North Carolina forced the company to disband the squad.

The struggle continues

Despite all the pressure, there are literally hundreds of workers at the plant actively fighting for the right to unionize. Local unions nationwide, civil rights groups and churches have gotten together with these workers to form Justice at Smithfield and there have been marches, actions and protest in towns and cities across the United States. Workers wear Justice at Smithfield T-shirts to work, and when the company recently ordered wholesale firings of immigrants, hundreds of workers walked off the job in protest.

Late last year there even was an “International Day of Action” that involved support rallies by unionized workers in U.S. plants and by workers in Smithfield-owned plants in Poland and Spain.

John Wojcik is a shop steward for the United Food and Commercial Workers union in northern New Jersey.

What you can do

There are several things everyone can do to support the struggle of the Smithfield workers. One is to learn about the issues. Log onto to get information. Second, be an informed consumer. Don’t purchase products packaged with abuse at Smithfield’s Tar Heel plant. This includes Smithfield bacon, popular across the country. Visit the web site listed above to learn how to identify products made in Tar Heel. Third, write letters. You can e-mail Smithfield Chairman Joe Luter III and the new CEO Larry Pope from the web site listed above. Demand that they sit down and negotiate with the workers. Fourth, support any solidarity actions that take place in your area.

Paying for protection: Two unions go to court to force OSHA to do its job

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:07:00 +0000

Two prominent labor organizations have sued the Bush administration for failing to protect nearly 20 million workers from job injuries. In 1999 the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposed a rule requiring employers to pay for protective clothing, face shields, gloves and other equipment used by workers. But before the proposal became a standard, Mr. Bush was elected to office. Since then, the Department of Labor has neglected to enact the standard.

The personal protective equipment (PPE) rule would require employers to pay for safety items that protect workers from job hazards. Many workers in the nation’s most dangerous industries, including meatpacking, poultry and construction, who have high rates of injury, are forced by their employers to pay for their own safety gear because of the failure of OSHA to implement the PPE rule. According to OSHA’s own figures, 400,000 workers have been injured and 50 have died owing to the lack of the PPE rule.

Under the Clinton administration, OSHA argued that employers are in a better position than workers to select, maintain and pay for the equipment best suited to protect them from injury. Poultry workers wear specialized wire mesh gloves to protect their hands and arms from cuts. Construction workers wear hard hats and shoes made of sturdy materials to protect them from falling objects. Consequently, in 1994, OSHA maintained that the PPE rule was intended to require employers to provide and pay for personal protective equipment that enabled workers to perform their job safely.

In fact, James W. Stanley, deputy assistant secretary of Labor under President Clinton, asserted in 1994 that “failure of the employers to pay for PPE that is not personal and not used away from the job is a violation and shall be cited.” But in April 2001, only four months into the Bush administration, OSHA suddenly discontinued listing a target date for formalizing the PPE rule into a standard. OSHA later announced that the rule would be implemented by March 2005, but that never happened.

That’s why the AFL-CIO and United Food and Commercial Workers sued the Department of Labor earlier this month. The lawsuit asks the federal courts to compel the secretary of labor to make the PPE rule an OSHA standard. It’s a sad turn of events when a government agency created to protect the health and welfare of the nation’s workers must be forced to do so.

In its first term the Bush administration withdrew dozens of safety and health rules from OSHA’s regulatory agenda. These rules dealt with indoor air quality, safety and health education programs, and dangerous industrial equipment. And in six years OSHA has only issued one major safety standard. In 2006, after being sued by a group of steelworkers, OSHA issued a standard regarding the potentially deadly chemical hexavalent chromium. But the standard was so weak that even OSHA admitted that it leaves workers at a significant risk of developing cancer.

OSHA budget slashed

Since 2001 OSHA’s budget has been cut by $14.5 million. Job safety programs have repeatedly been slashed. President Bush’s fiscal year 2007 budget completely eliminated funding for safety education and training programs. Not surprisingly, workplace fatalities and injuries have been on the rise. In 2004, the last year for which figures are available, there were 5,703 workplace deaths due to injuries.

Owing to cutbacks at OSHA, there were only about 2,100 inspectors responsible for enforcing the law at approximately eight million workplaces in 2005. At this staffing level it would take OSHA 117 years to inspect each workplace under its jurisdiction just once. And these inspections are becoming increasingly brief. Under the Bush administration, the average amount of time spent on each safety inspection by OSHA has declined 13 percent.

Given the previous position by OSHA to require employers to pay for personal protective equipment, there’s no justifiable reason that the Bush administration should not have formalized this rule by now. OSHA was created by Congress to protect the health and safety of America’s working men and women. It’s unfortunate that workers now have to rely on litigation to ensure their basic safety. The federal courts should move quickly to hear this lawsuit and force the government to protect the nation’s workforce.

genecgerard @ tx.rr.com

Freeze displaces thousands of California farmworkers

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:04:00 +0000

California’s citrus and other crops have been devastated by five consecutive nights of sub-freezing temperatures that struck Jan. 12, dealing a sharp blow to growers and putting thousands of farmworkers out of work, especially in the Central Valley. Though the citrus industry — which supplies most fresh oranges eaten in the U.S. — was hardest hit, other crops were also severely damaged, including strawberries, greens and other vegetables, and nursery plants.

Despite heroic efforts to save the crop, the damage to citrus alone is estimated at nearly $1 billion. The United Farm Workers union estimates the livelihoods of as many as 20,000 farmworkers and their families, who depend on citrus for several months of work each year, have been wiped out.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger moved quickly to proclaim a state of emergency covering 16 counties. He said the state would help workers affected by the freeze with food, shelter, energy aid and other services, and would open aid centers in many locations. The governor also called on the federal government for aid. State legislators were drafting measures to help growers and workers, and the entire California congressional delegation urged special federal assistance.

The United Farm Workers union says aid to farmworkers needs to include unemployment insurance, help with the costs of housing and utilities, and organized food distributions.

“The most essential aid to the farmworkers is unemployment insurance — that’s what puts money in people’s pockets for food, rent and other necessities,” said Marc Grossman, communications director for the UFW. “But this poses a dilemma for the majority of farmworkers, who are undocumented,” he added. “Federal restrictions bar them from receiving unemployment insurance.”

The UFW applauds the governor for thinking of the farmworkers and acting quickly, Grossman said, adding that the union “is looking to the governor and our federal representatives to help with this situation as well.”

Grossman said the special problems faced by undocumented workers show the need for immigration reform, and in particular, passage of the “AgJOBS bill,” to let farmworkers earn the right to legal status and to guarantee their labor rights. Under its provisions, he said, most farmworkers could qualify for unemployment insurance.

The measure, backed last year by over 500 organizations, including the AFL-CIO, was just reintroduced into Congress.

In the meantime, Grossman said, it is important to urge the state and federal governments to make an accommodation on unemployment insurance — an issue the union is already discussing with California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.

Workers in related industries such as packing and trucking are also affected by the freeze.

Some growers are also expressing concerns that under the economic pressure, farmworkers may leave areas hard hit by the freeze, causing big problems in the future for their employers. One grower in the southern California community of Oxnard told the Ventura County Star that just as Hurricane Katrina exposed the plight of many African Americans in 2005, California’s freeze is revealing the serious problems faced by farmworkers, including major problems with federal immigration policy.

The UFW web site, www.ufw.org, features an Action Center with an appeal to Gov. Schwarzenegger and Sen. Feinstein, and regular updates on the farmworkers’ situation.

mbechtel @ pww.org

Janitors fight sweeps through Twin Cities

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:01:00 +0000

MINNEAPOLIS (PAI) — Hundreds of janitors jammed a meeting Jan. 13 to overwhelmingly authorize a strike if a settlement cannot be reached with Twin Cities cleaning contractors.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) joined several legislators, Minneapolis City Council members and community, labor and religious leaders at the strike authorization meeting.

“This fight is about the future of the Twin Cities and the state of Minnesota,” said Ellison. “We can choose to live in a community with part-time jobs and no benefits, or we can stand up for full-time jobs that support a family and affordable health care for everyone.”

Even before the vote, the janitors’ stand had an effect. Javier Morillo-Alicea, president of Service Employees Local 26, said a federal mediator called him that morning to say the employers were interested in resuming bargaining. No date was set.

“That phone call this morning is progress,” Morillo-Alicea told union members gathered at the Minneapolis Labor Center. “We have to keep the pressure up. As long as there is progress, there is no strike. But we can’t back down.”

Local 26 represents 4,200 union janitors who clean office buildings throughout the Twin Cities. They work for cleaning contractors such as Marsden, ABM and MSI.

Key issues in the talks are health care and full-time jobs. The janitors’ pay is so low that of the 2,200 members with families who are eligible for the employers’ family coverage, only 14 can afford to have it, the union said.

“I work full-time, but my family is buried under medical bills,” said Lucrecia Mares, a janitor in Minnetonka. “My daughter has to get a test for her stomach condition, but without affordable insurance, we haven’t been able to take her to the doctor.”

Support from elected officials is part of a community solidarity campaign building around the janitors. In addition, several union janitors arrived in the Twin Cities starting Jan. 16 from Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit, Houston and other cities to assist in the campaign, the union said. The janitors’ situation in the Twin Cities echoes what SEIU has found elsewhere, from Miami to Houston to Los Angeles: large cleaning contractors, who do business nationwide, treating janitors in a wide range of ways, city by city.

Employers are offering only a 20-cent wage increase — leaving Twin Cities janitors far below their counterparts in cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia, the union said. Contractors also rejected the union’s proposal to increase the number of full-time jobs.

Union members waved placards that said “yes” in three languages — English, Spanish and Somali — and cheered as they took the authorization vote. The diverse membership includes many recent immigrants from Somalia and Latin America. In recent months, they have conducted rallies, marches and other activities to demand a fair contract through the “Justice for Janitors” campaign.

Two weeks ago, contractors left the bargaining table after giving the union what they said was their final offer. The contract between the union and cleaning companies expired Dec. 31.

Barb Kucera writes for Workday Minnesota.

Hotel room attendants tell their stories

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 07:10:00 +0000

SAN JOSE, Calif. — The walls of the meeting room were lined with photos of dozens of women, their warm and friendly faces contrasting sharply with the close-ups of their swollen, work-scarred hands, mounted below.

The occasion was a Jan. 17 hearing to help build public awareness of the impact on the lives and health of hundreds of room attendants — mostly women, many immigrants — as area hotels compete to make their guest rooms more and more elaborate.

Present to hear the workers’ stories were religious and community leaders from the Interfaith Council on Religion, Race, Economic and Social Justice.

An hour-by-hour account of a room attendant’s day — cleaning 16 rooms, all with double beds, many of them “check-outs” — was given by Anamaria Rodriguez, who came from Mexico two decades ago and now is married with four young children. Rodriguez spoke of stripping and remaking beds with ever-heavier mattresses, more complicated coverings and more numerous pillows; polishing the bathroom, the furniture and the mirrors spotless; and much more.

At the end of the day, she said, “I am tired, sore and worried about how I still have to pick up my kids, go home, give them all baths and help them with their homework, and fix dinner.”

“By Friday,” said Divina Roe, originally from the Philippines, “I had the worst pain in my back. That night I felt very weak and tired.” Scheduled to work on a Saturday, Roe said, she had to call in sick. “When I get home from work and I’ve cooked the dinner, I want to lie down and rest. But my daughter wants to play. She says, ‘Mommy, wake up, wake up!’ I feel bad that the most time I have with her is when I get home from work, but I need to rest and get ready for work the next day.”

Her words were echoed after the hearing by Raquel Alvarez, a former room attendant now working with Unite Here Local 19, to which most area hotel room cleaners belong. When she was pregnant with her now 2-year-old daughter, “it was very difficult to finish my rooms,” she said. “When my daughter was born, I couldn’t even hold her bottle. I was always tired, in pain, taking medicine, and didn’t want to play with her.”

Research done by the Labor Occupational Health Program at UC Berkeley, presented by Alicia Salvatore, confirmed their accounts. Among the findings: room attendants have a 75 percent greater chance of occupational injury than other hotel workers.

Over the years, as business has boomed and hotels have sprung up in San Jose and the surrounding area, now known as Silicon Valley, competition between them has become fierce, with more luxurious beds and many more amenities, Local 19 President Enrique Fernandez told the hearing. “All the while,” he said, “companies have come to expect the same quantity of work from their workers.”

While guests welcome the changes and corporate profits are rising, Fernandez said, “the toll on workers has been and continues to be life-changing. A public hearing like this will help educate people, and will help generate the support we need to send a message to local hotel companies.”

In a telephone interview, Fernandez said the campaign involves nearly 400 room cleaners, with support from the rest of the area’s 3,000 union hotel workers, other unions, the South Bay Labor Council and community organizations. He especially cited the role of the Interfaith Council, which he called “an amazing array of religious and community leaders involved in social justice.”

Thank you for telling your stories,” the Rev. Peggy White, a Lutheran pastor and Interfaith Council member, told the workers after their testimony. “Because you’ve been invisible, we don’t realize what you do. You have opened my eyes. I want people in my church to hear your story and to stand with you.”

mbechtel @ pww.org

If clinics close, where will sick go?

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 06:41:00 +0000

CHICAGO — The battle to fund human needs instead of war or tax breaks for the super-rich found its expression right in the heart of the Midwest.

A serious fightback is emerging here, after newly elected Cook County Board President Todd Stroger (D) proposed major cuts that would slash the county budget by 17 percent.

“These cuts are shortsighted and irresponsible,” said Henry Bayer, executive director of Illinois Council 31, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 6,000 workers in the county. AFSCME represents scores of public defenders who may lose their jobs, forcing delays in resolving court cases and resulting in increased costs.

But it is the draconian cuts to health services that have captured most of the attention. If approved, the $30 billion budget would close all but 10 of the county’s 26 community health clinics and cut major medical services at its three public hospitals.

The National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) led a large group of nurses, doctors, patients, and community and labor leaders in a spirited rally Jan. 18 in front of the county’s hospital, named after former county board President John Stroger, to oppose the measure.

Dr. Richard David, a pediatrician, has worked at Stroger Hospital for 20 years and says the budget cuts have national implications related to the war in Iraq. “Everybody knows where the money goes,” he told the World at the rally. “It’s going to the war and funds are being taken out of Medicaid to pay for it. We need health care, not warfare.” Many health care workers say such cutbacks are a prescription for disaster and will drastically impact residents who depend on the county for medical care.

Jim Pandazides, 43, is a 19-year registered nurse at Stroger Hospital. He says the county’s health services are a safety net for the working poor. “The cut proposals are trying to dismantle” the safety net, he said. “We can’t allow that.”

Fernando Rosada, Midwest director of the nurses committee, coordinated the rally. “Public health systems around the country are being gutted,” he said. “We’re here as a union to stand up for them, and what we need is a single-payer health care plan.”

According to NationalPriorities.org, President Bush’s unpopular and failing war in Iraq is costing U.S. taxpayers over $360 billion and counting. Over $8 billion of that is coming from Cook County alone.

With a $500 million deficit, County Board President Stroger and Health Bureau Chief Robert Simon are calling for a $112 million reduction in spending, which could eliminate up to 6,500 jobs.

Estimates are that the county health bureau would be cut by 12 percent, the state’s attorney’s office by 10 percent and the sheriff’s office by 7 percent.

Lucille Travers is a patient representative on an advisory council at one of the county’s major clinics. “Health care is a right and these services should be excluded from the cuts,” she said. “The patients have precedence over county golf courses, or raising employee salaries and other non-health-related services.” Travers asked, “If cuts are made, where will all the uninsured sick people go? County is it.”

Cook County, with a population of over 5 million, is the nation’s second largest county. It includes Chicago and nearby suburbs. In the county, 1.1 million reportedly live without health insurance.

Rhonda Brown, 48, an African American construction manager, waited patiently to be seen by a county doctor inside Stroger Hospital while the rally was taking place.

“It’s sick to cut when you have an overload of patients here,” Brown told the World. “A lot of people who work don’t have the money to pay the high costs of medical insurance. We need to open more public clinics, not close them,” she said. “We should have a strike or a boycott or something.”

A series of public hearings are scheduled through the end of January. Many leaders are urging people to fight back by packing the meetings and testifying, talking to elected officials and county commissioners, speaking at churches, and leafleting clinics and other sites about the deadly effects the cuts may have on services for sick patients.

Cook County officials must pass the budget plan by Feb. 28.

plozano @ pww.org

Colombia: murder and migration

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 09:09:00 +0000

Development projects anywhere in the world often have a high human cost. In Colombia, the price is often measured in human lives and blood.

Esperanza (she would risk her life, she says, if her real name appeared in print) saw her neighbors pay that price in 2001. Her house sits on the bank of the Rio Salvajina, in the Afro-Colombian municipality of Buenos Aires in Cauca province.

“I saw armed men arrive in cars,” she remembers, “with two, three, four, even five people tied up. They dragged them onto the bridge, shot them two or three times and threw their bodies into the river.” When the paramilitaries came to her own home, she was so frightened she lost the baby she’d been carrying for five months.

Today Esperanza is a community activist organizing against the hydropower project for which her neighbors were killed. If ratified by Congress, the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which President Bush and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe signed in mid- November, could lead to more such projects, she fears, and more such violence. “It will permit many more development projects by multinational companies. Many more people will be displaced. And if they won’t leave voluntarily, there will be more assassinations. We know this because we live with it already.”

Esperanza’s experience is a microcosm of the large-scale impact of corporate development in Colombia’s countryside. One quarter of Colombia’s nearly 43 million people are Afro-Colombian, and most live in rural areas, where resources like hydropower and gold and mineral deposits are concentrated. Far from enhancing the villagers’ lives, however, these projects more commonly despoil their lands and force them to flee.

Esperanza’s family was first displaced by construction of the dam on the Rio Salvajina in 1984. Along with 3,600 others, her parents and brothers were compelled to leave the valley. Behind the dam, water flooded schools, homes, churches, even cemeteries. And when the turbines started to roll, the Spanish energy conglomerate, Union Fenosa, had plenty of electricity to sell on Latin America’s power market (the dam’s purpose was to generate power that Union Fenosa could market to other countries).

A number of community leaders who resisted removal were killed or disappeared. “The company didn’t kill people directly,” Esperanza cautions. “It asked the state, through the army, to force people to leave so they could run their business.”

Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities insisted that the country’s constitution, rewritten in 1991, recognize their right to their historical territories. Law 70, passed in 1993, said these communities had to be consulted and give their approval prior to any new projects planned on their land. Having a law is one thing, however. Enforcing it is another.

By 2001, silt had begun to build up behind the Rio Salvajina dam. Power generation, and Union Fenosa’s income, dropped. The company then proposed a new megaproject, to divert the Rio Ovejas from its course in the next valley into the Rio Salvajina reservoir. Knowing families couldn’t survive the loss of their river, local communities refused to consent. Union Fenosa asked the government to put the project on hold.

Then right-wing paramilitaries moved in.

Because the government is under pressure to respect international human rights standards, it’s not as easy to use the army to drive out people as it was 20 years ago. “They use the paramilitaries,” Esperanza says. That’s when she saw the bodies thrown into the river in front of her house. “Leaders began to disappear. There were massacres, not just of people living in the area, but even those who’d fled to other places. Their bodies were dumped here. And after the paramilitaries arrived and the resistance was weakened, they came back with the proposal again.”

Another megaproject is planned for the same area. Anglo American, the South African gold mining consortium, wants to pulverize a nearby mountain and extract gold from the ore. For generations, families in nearby Buenos Aires and Palo Blanco have depended on small-scale gold mining to survive. It’s a hard living, however. Many women already leave their children in the care of neighbors and family to work as domestics in Cali, the closest city. “If we can’t mine the gold the way we’ve done in the past, we won’t even have that to sustain us,” says Palo Blanco resident Ana Valencia (whose name also has been changed for fear of reprisals).

Large gold mines often leave behind huge mountains of tailings, and ponds filled with chemicals used to leach the metal from ore. Pollution will also make subsistence farming harder. Power and gold sales create dividends, but the only Colombians who really benefit from them are a handful of brokers in Bogota.

The Colombian government, however, like many in thrall to market-driven policies, sees foreign investment in these projects as the key to economic development, and thus revenue. It cuts the budget for public services needed by Afro-Colombian, indigenous and other poor communities.

The collusion of the Colombian government with business has also made Colombia the most dangerous nation for union activists, more of whom are murdered there every year than in any other country-and in some years, than in every other country.

In Washington, leading members of the incoming Democratic Congress have called for stricter labor and environmental standards for proposed free trade agreements; some have labeled the agreement with Colombia a non-starter. And while a number of prominent Democrats oppose the U.S. military aid program, Plan Colombia, which underwrites much of the Colombian military budget in the name of curtailing drug production, its fate is not so clear.

What is crystal clear is that a number of leaders of rural Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities who stand in the way of such foreign investment will, like the leaders of Colombia’s unions, in all probability disappear or die. And while most displaced Colombians become internal migrants in the country’s growing urban slums, that migratory stream will eventually cross borders into those wealthy countries whose policies have set it into motion.

David Bacon is a photographer and reporter who specializes in labor issues. This article originally appeared in The American Prospect and is reprinted by permission of the author.

Year opens with 2 more deaths in the mines

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 09:20:00 +0000

CUCUMBER, W.Va. — James “Butch” Thomas, 47, and Pete Poindexter, 33, were working a mile and half inside the Brooks Run Company’s Cucumber mine, Jan. 13, when the roof collapsed, killing both miners.

There were 35 miners working inside at the time of the collapse. There were no other fatalities or injuries.

It took three and a half hours to recover the men’s bodies because “they had to be careful doing that work [recovery] because of the roof fall and the roof conditions,” said Caryn Gresham, spokeswoman for the state Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training.

Families, miners and neighbors filled the Faith Tabernacle Church in Crumpler. Many brought food. The Rev. Allen Click and Laura Click, his wife, regularly provide food for those attending services. Five and half hours after the incident, company officials made the announcement about the fatalities to the families and friends gathered at the church.

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) reports that the Cucumber mine reported double the national average for injuries in 2006. MSHA cited the company, whose parent corporation is Abingdon, Va.-based Alpha Natural Resources, for 65 safety violations, levying $5,051 in fines, which the company paid. Thirty-two violations occurred during the last six months of 2006, and six were roof security and control problems.

In 2006, 90 miners worked at the mine, producing 375,000 tons of coal worth $15.7 million.

Boost minimum wage, right to organize

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 08:14:00 +0000

There are many vital issues that helped forge the alliance that dealt such a devastating blow to the immoral ultra-right cabal last Nov. 7. Perhaps one of the least sung but critically important sectors is the movement for raising the national minimum wage and the forces dedicated to that struggle.

The new mass buoyancy coming out of the election victory lays the basis for mass support for its passage, especially since the $7.25 minimum wage is one of the four key pieces of legislation the new Democrat congressional majority seeks to pass in the first 100 hours in the new Congress.

The $7.25 minimum wage can and must be passed and any Bush veto overridden. It will make a difference for millions of people living at or below the poverty level.

But there is much more to the question to be examined. This struggle has sensitized new millions to the fact that there is a rapidly growing sector of our country who are ill-clothed, ill-housed and ill-fed. There is a new awareness that there is a growing downward economic spiral swooping down on millions. These numbers are added to by increasing numbers of industrial workers who are losing their higher paying jobs and by immigrant workers who are pushed into starvation wage jobs.

Fundamentally, $7.25 an hour solves no real problems for families, even as it helps ease some pain. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said: “If a boss can’t pay a living wage, he shouldn’t be in business.” In today’s economy, $7.25 an hour is not a living wage. But it’s a start.

The living wage movement is a grassroots movement based on people’s needs. It will continue.

The movement to pass the $7.25 minimum wage serves as a perfect platform to struggle for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. They are kith and kin. The Employee Free Choice Act would open the way for organizing new millions of unorganized workers and bringing them under union contract with higher wages and economic conditions.

That’s what happened under the Employee Free Choice Act’s predecessor, the Wagner Act. Former AFL-CIO President George Meany put it like this: “The best anti-poverty program is a good union contract with good union wages.”

When the new millions join the unions, they will start negotiating from a $7.25 floor instead of a $5.25. On the legislative front that translates into a process to progress from passage of a $7.25 minimum wage to passage of a real living wage, one which eliminates poverty-level family budgets and which is designed to have the masses share in the riches they produce in a guaranteed and meaningful way.

The gap between worker wages and the scandalous CEO salaries has grown so great that Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who heads up the House Financial Services Committee, will launch a formal study of the yawning income gap. He also called on the Federal Reserve Board to start concerning itself with the problem.

The forward progress of all issues which brought together the allies that defeated the ultra-right will be well served with passage of the $7.25 minimum wage and doubly so with passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. It is essential that the whole alliance acts as one, quickly and decisively, to push these measures through.

economics @ cpusa.org

Labor to Senate: Raise minimum wage with no strings attached

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 07:27:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — The broad labor-led coalition supporting the Democrats’ “100 Hour Agenda” in the 110th Congress hailed the 315-116 House vote Jan. 10 to raise the minimum wage to $7.25, and urged the Senate also to approve the increase without more tax giveaways to big business.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney praised the House vote but warned that President George W. Bush insists new tax cuts for the rich be added. “Business has enjoyed hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts since Bush took office while health care, secure retirement and the minimum wage have all been on government’s back burner,” Sweeney told a Capitol Hill news conference Jan. 10.

He called on senators “to reject corporate poison pills and vote for a fair, long overdue raise in the minimum wage … with no strings attached.”

Change America Now (CAN), a coalition of 40 organizations — among them the National Council of Churches, AFL-CIO, Sierra Club, United States Student Association and NOW — has mobilized grassroots support for the 100-hour agenda. “I think our work has been incredibly important and we are seeing the effects of it right now,” said CAN spokesperson Jeremy Funk. “By this weekend we will have organized 50 field events across the country. We convinced 82 Republicans to vote with all the Democrats to raise the minimum wage, a veto-proof margin.”

Funk said the actions included news conferences on the doorsteps of Republican lawmakers, town hall meetings, vigils and demonstrations and hundreds of thousands of telephone calls and e-mails. “We have generated huge bipartisan support for an increase in the minimum wage. Now we are exerting pressure on the Senate to pass a clean bill and send it to the president’s desk.”

The multiracial low-income advocacy group ACORN, a CAN affiliate, joined in the mobilization. Vanessa Gueringer, president of ACORN’s chapter in the 9th Ward of New Orleans, told the World in a telephone interview, “An increase in the minimum wage will help 15 million workers across the country. It will help so many low-income workers here in New Orleans struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina. It will encourage people to return to New Orleans to rebuild and get on with their lives.”

Very few people have received the federal assistance Bush promised for rebuilding their homes, she charged.

Gueringer, her husband and daughter are living in a FEMA trailer parked on their property in the 9th Ward where she has lived her whole life. “I’ve received very little from my insurance company. We’re still waiting for the ‘Road to Home’ [federal] money to repair our house.” But with the Democrats in the majority they expect quick action now.

“People across the country have decided we need to go in another direction,” she said. “The Republicans had power for so long. It’s been 10 years since the minimum wage was raised, but the Congress gave themselves raises 10 times. Hundreds of billions have been spent in Iraq, but there is a lack of funding for us here at home. Why hasn’t the rebuilding of New Orleans been addressed?”

CAN is also mobilizing support for the other economic measures in the 100-hour agenda, including a bill approved 255-170 by the House Jan. 12 to require the government to negotiate lower prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies for the Medicare Part D drug plan.

The House also approved 253-174 a bill to authorize embryonic stem cell research, reversing Bush’s veto of a similar bill last year. Also passed 356-71 was a bill to cut in half over five years the interest rate on federally subsidized college student loans.

On the day Congress convened, lawmakers passed by a 430-1 vote an ethics reform bill terminating gifts, free meals and free transportation on corporate jets to curb influence peddling by corporate lobbyists in Washington. Also high on the 100-hour agenda is repealing billions of dollars in tax subsidies doled out to the profit-swollen oil and gas corporations, giveaways authored by Vice President Dick Cheney’s secretive Energy Policy Task Force.

Many if not all these measures are now pending in the Senate, where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has vowed to obstruct them. Bush has also threatened to veto the bill to reform Medicare Part D and the stem cell research bill. Funk said this Republican obstructionism underlines the urgency of grassroots pressure for passage by strong bipartisan votes.

Monique Morrisey, a spokesperson for the labor-supported Economic Policy Institute, told the World, “Initiatives to raise the minimum wage were on the ballot in six states last Nov. 7 and voters approved all of them by overwhelming bipartisan majorities. Bush may have other issues on his mind than vetoing a minimum wage increase when it is put on his desk. He should sign it.”

greenerpastures21212 @ yahoo.com

Picket supports Woodfin Suites workers

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 09:52:00 +0000

Community support continues for workers at the Woodfin Suites Hotel in Emeryville, Calif., threatened with firing after they called on management to obey the city’s living wage ordinance.

In October, the hotel sent 21 workers, all immigrants, notices alleging their Social Security numbers were wrong. Last month the hotel announced the workers were being suspended and would be terminated.

Under an Alameda County judge’s temporary restraining order, the workers returned to their jobs pending a further court hearing Jan. 23. But they report their hours have been sharply cut.

Supporters mobilized by the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy are picketing on Saturdays from 7-11 a.m., and Tuesdays from 3-7 p.m. They are asking people to call Woodfin CEO Samuel Hardage at (858) 794-2338, ext. 700, urging him to reinstate the workers with full hours and job security and to comply with Emeryville’s living wage ordinance. Meanwhile, they urge a boycott of the hotel.

Immigrant rights advocates point out that under government regulations, so-called no-match letters are not a reason to fire workers.

— Marilyn Bechtel (mbechtel @ pww.org)

Labor to neighbor

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 09:22:00 +0000

Members of the Community Services Committee of the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO prepare to distribute over 400 Christmas baskets to laid off workers Dec. 16. The committee members include workers from AFSCME, IBEW, IAM, Letter Carriers, Operating Engineers, UAW, Teamsters, Steelworkers, Utility Workers and others. Teamsters Local 299 members drove a semi with the food to the federation’s parking lot for the distribution.

Unions sue Bush Dept. of Labor over worker deaths

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 07:05:00 +0000

50 deaths, 400,000 injuries tied to OSHA’s inaction

Poultry workers typically stand shoulder to shoulder de-boning chicken breasts mounted on cones flying by at the rate of dozens per minute. They must wear metal mesh gloves on their non-cutting hands to protect them from the razor sharp blades they and their co-workers wield at lightening speed.

But too often a worker who finds a hole in his or her glove might put off replacing it. Why?

While the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires employers to “provide” such personal safety equipment, the agency does nothing to prevent employers from charging their workers for it. For a low-paid poultry worker, the 80 bucks it costs for a metal mesh glove could be two day’s take-home pay.

A lawsuit filed Jan. 3 by the AFL-CIO and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union charges that the Bush administration is putting American workers in danger by stonewalling on enacting an OSHA rule originally scheduled to take effect in 2000 to ensure that employers pay for personal safety equipment (PPE).

“Workers in some of America’s most dangerous industries such as meatpacking, poultry and construction … are being forced by their employers to pay for their own safety gear because of OSHA’s failure to finish the PPE rule,” a joint statement by the two labor groups declared.

In 1999, during the Clinton administration, OSHA set itself a deadline of 2000 to implement a rule which would ensure that employers pay for the personal protective equipment needed to protect workers in dangerous jobs. In the succeeding seven years, as the Bush Department of Labor stalled, 50 workers have died and 400,000 have been injured due to the absence of the rule. These numbers come from OSHA’s own estimates.

“These are the most vulnerable workers — Black women, immigrant workers — the exact group of workers OSHA should be taking care of,” Jackie Newell, safety director for the UFCW, told the World. Newell explained that while in union-represented plants the workers are collectively able to enforce the employer’s responsibility to provide safety equipment, in nonunion facilities management even makes a profit from it.

Management has been interpreting their legal obligation to provide safety equipment as a responsibility to sell safety equipment. “These low-wage workers are in a double-bind,” Newell said. “We’ve heard of cases of management charging $15 to $30 for the required slip-proof rubber boots, and charging $1 a pair in vending machines for hearing protection earplugs that wholesale for a penny a piece.”

The OSHA PPE rule would require employers to cover the cost of personal protective equipment, including clothing, lifelines, face shields, gloves, hearing protection and other gear used by an estimated 20 million workers to protect themselves from job hazards.

The PPE rule was proposed in 1999 by OSHA after a ruling by the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission that OSHA’s existing PPE standard could not be interpreted to require employers to pay for protective equipment.

“The new rule would not impose any new obligations on employers to provide safety equipment; it simply codifies OSHA’s longstanding policy that employers, not employees, have the responsibility to pay for it,” said the unions’ statement.

In 1999, OSHA promised to issue the final PPE by July 2000. In 2003 it failed to respond to a petition by the AFL-CIO and the UFCW. It has also ignored numerous requests for action by the Hispanic Congressional Caucus.

“Nothing is standing in the way of OSHA issuing a final PPE rule to protect worker safety and health except the will to do so,” said UFCW President Joe Hansen. “We are asking the courts to force OSHA to act.”

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, “The Bush Department of Labor should stop looking out for corporate interests at the expense of workers’ safety and health. Too many workers have already been hurt or killed.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, asks the court to issue an order directing the secretary of labor to complete the PPE rule within 60 days of the court’s order.

rwood@pww.org