People Before Profit blog

Black History reprint: Working-class roots of Bill Withers

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 07:18:00 +0000

You might be a Bill Withers fan without realizing it.

If you ever grooved to Will Smith’s “Just the Two of Us,” sang along with “Lean On Me” or thought to yourself, “Ain’t No Sunshine” when she’s gone, you know Withers’ timeless musical touch.

Artists who have covered his songs read like a who’s who of pop music: Sting, Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney, Aretha Franklin and Tom Jones, among others. Withers’ work has been heard in more than 50 films and television shows, a dozen commercials and as samples in countless rap tunes.

The 67-year-old singer-songwriter, whose hits also include “Use Me” and “Lovely Day,” was honored by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, June 26, for his musical contributions. LL Cool J was also honored.

Born July 4, 1938, in Slab Folk, W.Va., Withers was the youngest of six children. His father died when he was a child and he was raised by his mother and grandmother. After a nine-year stint in the Navy, Withers moved to Los Angeles to pursue a music career in 1967. He recorded demos at night while working production at the Boeing aircraft company.

Withers wrote “Lean on Me” based on his experiences growing up in a West Virginia coal mining town. Times were hard and when neighbors needed something beyond their means, the rest of the community would chip in and help, he said. Withers said he came up with the chord progression while noodling around on his new Wurlitzer electric piano and the sound of the chords reminded him of the hymns that he heard at church while he was growing up.

“If you stick around long enough, eventually somebody’s going to give you something,” Withers joked with Associated Press writer Sandy Cohen about his ASCAP award.

With working-class modesty, he insists there’s nothing too special about him. Everyone likes to sing, he said, everyone likes music and he can’t really play guitar or piano.

“I just was able to plunk around with them enough to write some songs,” he said.

Still Bill Trailer from B-Side Entertainment on Vimeo.

UPDATED: Feb. 18, 2010

A new documentary about the music legend Bill Withers has just been released. "Still Bill" by b-side films is currently playing in NYC, but is available on DVD. House viewing parties are encouraged. The film is described as "an intimate portrait of soul legend Bill Withers, best known for his classics 'Ain't No Sunshine,' 'Lean On Me,' 'Lovely Day,' 'Grandma's Hands,' and 'Just the Two of Us.' With his soulful delivery and warm, heartfelt sincerity, Withers has written the songs that have - and always will - resonate deeply within the fabric of our times."

This 4th of July, which side are you on?

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 06:53:00 +0000

Florence Reece, wife of a rank-and-file organizer for the old National Miners Union in Harlan County, Kentucky, was at home one day in 1931 when High Sheriff J. H. Blair and his gun-toting “deputies” invaded her home looking for Mrs. Reece’s husband. They poked their rifles into closets, under beds, even into piles of laundry before they left.

Outraged at this invasion of her privacy, Mrs. Reece tore an old calendar from the wall and on its back wrote the verses to one of the truly timeless union songs, “Which Side Are You On?”

Sung to an old hymn tune, the burden of the song is that in Harlan County, Kentucky, nobody can be neutral. You pick sides: Stand up for the union, or “be a thug for J. H. Blair”

This song came to mind when I read about the ruling by a 5-4 U. S. Supreme Court majority that evidence found by police who enter a home without first following the requirement to “knock and announce” their presence can be used at trial — the Fourth Amendment notwithstanding.

Now the Fourth Amendment is part of our Bill of Rights. It’s not long-winded. Here it is, in full:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.”

On this Fourth of July, as on every Fourth of July, it would be well to remember that the Fourth Amendment — indeed the entire Bill of Rights — did not materialize full-blown out of the drifting smoke of some law professor’s briar pipe.

The enumeration of rights in the Bill of Rights was the distilled expression of lessons bitterly learned during years of revolutionary struggle against a tyrannical government.

The “knock and announce” requirement is critical to the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment. It dates to 13th-century England as a protection against illegal entry by the police into private homes. In our country, it has been a well-established part of Fourth Amendment law since 1914.

And now, to quotes a New York Times editorial, “President Bush’s two recent Supreme Court appointments have provided the votes for a 5-4 decision eviscerating this rule.”

Congratulations, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. You’ve taken our level of protection against lawless cops back to pre-13th-century standards.

Will Parry is president of the Puget Sound, Wash., Alliance for Retired Americans.

Bakers rise up: Working at Fiesta Mart in Houston is no party

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 05:19:00 +0000

HOUSTON — Bakery commissary workers at the Fiesta Mart grocery store on Wirt Road in Houston will vote June 30 on whether to join the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 130. Concurrently, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Locals 408 and 455 have started an organizing drive among the grocery workers at Fiesta Mart stores.

In a collaborative effort, UFCW staged a “blitz” of all Fiesta stores in Houston at 1 p.m. on June 21. The 30 participants included members of UFCW, SEIU, Unite Here, UAW, IBEW and other friends of labor. They all entered the Fiesta stores at the same time and distributed UFCW handbills to employees on the job. The point of the action was to make contact with grocery workers, and, more important, to distract the managers at Fiesta. The managers have been harassing, attempting to intimidate and humiliating the bakers leading up to the election.

Harris County AFL-CIO reports that Local 130 has filed unfair labor practice charges against Fiesta with the National Labor Relations Board. They allege that Fiesta has used cameras to conduct illegal surveillance of employees. The grocery chain has also implemented a gag rule and “no solicitation” rules for union materials and conversations. Workers have been interrogated by supervisors who have also threatened to fire those who sign union cards or vote for the union. Fiesta is also charged with threatening to shut down the plant if the union wins the election.

U.S. Rep. Gene Green (D-Houston), Texas state Reps. Dr. Alma Allen, Kevin Bailey, Jessica Ferrar, and Senfronia Thompson and Houston City Council member Sue Lovell have all written letters to Fiesta Mart CEO Louis Katopodis asking him to allow employees to choose a union free from intimidation and harassment.

Fifty people gathered June 24 at a Holiday Inn Express in Houston to express their solidarity with the bakers.

Rep. Green told the group, “People need to be paid a decent wage and given respect for the hard work they do. A union can make that happen.”

A Fiesta worker spoke to the crowd in Spanish with a translator. He noted that he has only received a 5 cent per hour raise after five years on the job. “Is it a wage increase or another humiliation?” he asked. “No respect at all.” He described the working conditions at the bakery commissary. Workers arrive at 5 a.m., he said. One day, while a number of female employees waited at the door, a mentally ill man came by waving a gun. He pointed it at them and pulled the trigger. Fortunately, the gun was not loaded. Everybody ran away. Later in the day, the speaker said, he went to management and complained that security was never present when they arrived for work. An hour later he was called into Human Resources and accused of stealing two bottles of water. His receipts proving he had paid for them were ignored. He was subsequently fired, but got his job back. “My main point is this always happens,” said the speaker. “There’s always retaliation.” The woman who had had the gun pointed at her stood up to validate his story.

Another bakery worker addressed the group in Spanish and his son translated. He noted he had been working for Fiesta for 21 years. He declared: “They use psychology and attack you on insignificant things. It got to the point where we’re not going to take it any more. We’re going to vote and we’re going to win! It’s the only line of defense.” His son, a biology student at the University of Houston, read up on unions. He sent an e-mail to BCTGM outlining his father’s complaints about the working conditions at Fiesta. This led to the organizing effort. The son stated, “Not all tyrants remain in power!”

phill2@houston.rr.com

New York teacher exposes results of Republican takeover of public education

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 05:01:00 +0000

“This is the first time toilet paper inspired me to write an article,” says our correspondent, a United Federation of Teachers delegate. “I was working at the committee on special education writing a psychological report. I went to the bathroom and, lo and behold, a new toilet paper dispenser, the third one installed. The other two installations were pulled out of the wall in perfectly fine condition. I hear that the reason was the new dispensers dispense cheaper toilet paper. One way the city Department of Education can save money!”

What has changed in our schools? Well the toilet paper dispensers at the special education headquarters in Brooklyn, have changed — three times in one school year — while the city closed down 800 seats for the most needy in public education. Go figure!

But that is not all. Before Republican Mayor Mike Bloomberg took over the educational system, every school psychologist, assigned teacher and social worker had access to computers with the appropriate educational programs they needed to do their jobs.

Well, Dell Corporation must have gotten a big fat contract. They came in and pulled out all the functioning computers. They set new Dell desktops on every desk.

Wonderful, right? Wrong! The new computers were minus the programs we need to write individual educational plans for children with special needs. Now special education professionals sit at our desks next to the new Dell computers and hand write nine pages of individual educational plans.

The new computers are rigged so that the Tweed Building where Chancellor Joe Klein (whom I prefer to call Mike Bloomberg’s lapdog) can monitor every computer in the educational system and track what web sites they are logging on to.

This is tutoring?

It gets worse. In the last contract, the mayor added 37.5 minutes to the teachers’ workday. The time is supposed to be used for tutoring. However, each teacher must have at least 10 students. That tells you right there it isn’t “tutoring,” but small group instruction — and five minutes away from an added class period.

What the Department of Education didn’t work into its plan, however, was how were the teachers going to both dismiss their class and gather their 10 children at the same time? What were the younger siblings going to do while waiting for their older brothers and sisters attending the “tutorial” sessions.

As it now stands, on any given day you will see about 100 younger children sitting in the auditorium waiting 37.5 minutes for their older siblings. There is nothing in the plan to supervise these children.

It gets worse. I work in a school where a tiny little room with no windows must be shared with four other teachers. We can actually hear the mice scurrying in the walls. Their droppings are all over our desks, tables and bookshelves. These deplorable conditions for both elementary students and teachers have been deemed acceptable by the New York City Department of Education.

While the teachers and parents demand a better school building, the charter school down the street is getting city funds. The chancellor and mayor have been opening more and more charter schools instead of supporting the public school system. They are even housing charter schools inside public schools.

I ask you, how can a public official support private enterprise at the expense of children’s and teachers’ health?

— Maria Ortiz

In next week’s edition, our correspondent continues to document the changes wrought by Republican takeover of the New York Public Schools, including schoolchildren tested literally till they vomit.

Congress rejects minimum wage hike

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 04:27:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — The House and Senate refusal to approve a small increase in the minimum wage proves that the Republican majority is “morally bankrupt” and should be removed from office next Nov. 7.

So said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, commenting on Senate and House votes June 22 to reject an increase in the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25. It would have been the first increase in nine years.

The same day, the House approved, 269-153, a bill to slash the estate tax. It ultimately would cost the U.S. Treasury $1 trillion and is seen as a flagrant giveaway to the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers, about 7,500 super-wealthy families. Only those with estates worth $1.5 million for an individual and $3 million for a couple are subject to the tax. Senate Majority Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) had hoped to ram a similar bill through the Senate before the July 4 congressional recess, but was unable to muster the 60 votes necessary to end a Democratic filibuster.

Economic Policy Institute analysts Jared Bernstein and Ross Eisenbrey expressed disbelief that the House would vote down a minimum wage increase and vote to lavish another tax break on the rich on the same day. “It’s hard to find words to express the outrage of these actions,” they declared. “Instead of a small overdue boost to low-wage workers … they want to shovel even more of the benefits of our prodigious productivity growth to the top of the wealth scale.”

Bernstein told the World, “I think they [the Republicans] are addicted to these regressive tax cuts with absolutely no reflection on the inequalities they are generating. This Congress has shown real disdain for core responsibilities the people expect the government to carry out.”

Citing the failure to help the victims of Katrina, the war in Iraq, and refusal to raise the minimum wage, he said, “They are betraying the people’s trust. The Democrats would be very wise to point out these skewed priorities. If they do so convincingly, if they offer alternative policies that help the people, they can win” in the November elections.

Anna Oman, media spokesperson for OMB Watch, a government watchdog group, told the World, “It is really shameful that these lawmakers obstructed a vote on the minimum wage.” But she called Frist’s failure to push the estate tax cut through the Senate a victory, spurred by OMB Watch and a coalition of other citizen advocacy groups who flooded the Senate with messages demanding that it block the giveaway.

Speaking on the House floor, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) condemned a culture of runaway greed among the Republicans. “It is immoral. It is wrong,” he said, that 7 million minimum-wage earners “work hard every day to feed their families,” but “cannot afford health care [or] to fill their cars with gas, and they have not seen an increase in the minimum wage for nine years. This Congress should be ashamed. When will we stop helping the super-rich? When will we start to take care of the least among us?”

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Government Reform, released a report last year revealing that estate tax repeal would hand Bush’s cabinet members collectively “between $91 million and $344 million.” The report estimates Bush’s net worth as high as $6.2 million, Dick Cheney’s fortune at $111 million and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s at $101 million.

OMB Watch charges that 18 super-wealthy families have bankrolled the repeal drive. Among them are Amway founder Richard DeVos, a Republican candidate for governor of Michigan, and former Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, who would rake in $160 million if the tax is repealed.

“The current congressional leadership has disgraced itself,” Sweeney said. “It’s time for them to go.” He called on all trade unionists to volunteer in the Labor 2006 drive to “fill Congress with friends of working people” in the Nov. 7 elections. Democrats must pick up 15 House seats and six Senate seats to end Republican control of Congress.

Banner day for Washington health care activists

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 07:59:00 +0000

Workers’Correspondence

United for National Health Care and Whatcom County (Wash.) Jobs with Justice held a successful Health Care Day of Action in Whatcom and Skagit counties June 7. During evening rush hour, 70 people participated at 15 overpasses on Interstate 5 with banners proclaiming: Health Care for All — Now!

The signs were greeted by most motorists with honking and waving, thumbs up and victory/peace signs throughout the hour and a half we were out. Many participants commented on the many, many positive responses from truckers and bus drivers. Both city bus drivers as well as long-haul bus drivers supported our signs with honks and waves. Semi-truck drivers let out their loud, long horns in support. Notably, a Wal-Mart truck honked at each overpass he drove by. A car drove by and people leaned out of all four windows waving enthusiastically.

We welcome all these indications of support for this struggle. And we’re encouraged this reflects the growing sentiment that we need national health insurance to solve this growing crisis.

After the bannering, about 40 of the participants came together for a potluck: great food and great company! We also screened the new animated short film, “Don’t Be A Chicken.” It was a nice chance to socialize and share experiences. One person suggested bannering once a month

Other June actions supporting HR 676 included the following:

• On June 1 we had flyers inserted into 12,000 issues of the Bellingham Herald asking readers to call 2nd Congressional District Rep. Rick Larsen and ask him to co-sponsor HR 676.

• On June 3 about 30 people held the banners outside of Rep. Larsen’s campaign kick-off event in Bellingham. Another great day of horns honking and people waving!

• At “Everything Ends in Fairhaven” (the end of the “Ski to Sea” race), we set up a van with two banners and crews distributing copies of the Herald insert.

• Some of our supporters marched in the Ski to Sea parade with a banner and signs.

All of these acts are helping to build on the great success of our Citizen/Congressional Hearing in March, which 320 people attended.

— Chris Lindberg (clindberg360@msn.com), a health care activist in Bellingham, Wash.

CLUW fights for family leave

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 07:44:00 +0000

Big business tried to keep the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) from becoming law in 1993. Now the business lobby is trying to dismantle one of this era’s most family-friendly reforms, says the Coalition of Labor Union Women.

More than 50 million workers have taken advantage of the FMLA by taking unpaid leave to care for themselves or their loved ones — with the guarantee that their job will be waiting for them when they return. CLUW is alerting all of its members that business groups are pushing hard to restrict the ability of workers to take time off and even to end the job guarantee, according to an article in the Spring 2006 CLUW newsletter. In the face of this campaign to weaken the law, CLUW instead advocates expanding the FMLA to allow leave for more people for more reasons — and to mandate paid leave.

Although it took an act of Congress to create the FMLA, CLUW warns that its provisions could be undone without any action on Capitol Hill. The Department of Labor has the authority to make revisions, following a public comment period. The department has placed changes to the FMLA on its list of regulatory priorities, so action could come at any time.

CLUW has launched a campaign to fight any attempts to dismantle the FMLA. In fact, says CLUW, FMLA needs to be expanded because so many workers are left behind. Two in five employees are not covered at all under the act, which only covers companies with 50 or more employees, and then only covers workers with at least one year on the job.

FMLA supporters propose extending the law to allow workers to take leave for additional family needs — such as parent-teacher conferences, taking an elderly parent to the doctor or staying home with a child who has the flu.

In addition, too many workers can’t take advantage of the FMLA because they can’t afford to take unpaid leave, so CLUW supports paying for family leave.

New Haven demands justice for janitors

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 07:15:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Over 1,000 janitors and their supporters gathered here June 15 to say the time has come for janitors in New Haven to become union members.

“You cannot live on the wages you earn and your kids cannot afford a good education,” Hector Figueroa, SEIU Local 32 BJ secretary treasurer, told them. “We have won many struggles before, and this is one more that we are going to win.”

Figueroa added, “We want to send a strong message to the real estate community in New Haven that we will not tolerate janitors in New Haven earning poverty wages.”

The average janitor in the New Haven area makes $7.40 an hour, barely above the state minimum of $7.25 and only a third of what it costs to live in the area. Without a union, these janitors have no sick days or other benefits. Many are employed only part time. Most are immigrants, many from Latin America.

By contrast, Figueroa said, in the greater Hartford area, janitors are union members and earn upwards of $11 an hour with benefits.

“We are here today with you — we believe in social justice,” said the Rev. Jose Champagne, president of the New Haven Spanish Clergy Association. “We have been in many struggles. Fair wages win dignity for working people.”

Among participants were demonstrators from Stamford, Hartford and New York City.

Just before the march kicked off, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said, “I am very hopeful that good minds and goodwill will prevail.”

Chanting “Whose streets? Our streets!” the demonstrators marched through downtown to New Haven City Hall where they were greeted by Mayor John DeStefano.

“I heard banging and sirens,” DeStefano said. “This is what America is about — hardworking people demanding fair wages.”

DeStefano has joined some 140 organizations in signing the Justice for Janitors Bill of Rights.

Detroit janitors fight for union wages, benefits

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 07:13:00 +0000

DETROIT — On June 15, national Justice for Janitors day, several hundred Detroit area janitors, members of Service Employees International Union Local 3, marched to the new downtown PricewaterhouseCoopers building to send notice to New Image, the nonunion cleaning contractor servicing the building, that they will not allow nonunion businesses to take root in the city. On their way back, the marchers were warmly greeted by many fans leaving the stadium of baseball’s first-place Detroit Tigers.

With the Master Janitorial Contract covering 1,500 employees in the Detroit metro area set to expire June 30, the rally also sent the message that workers are in no mood for concessions.

Those companies that do not yet have union workers should get ready because the union is coming, said Dana Sevakis, assistant program director for Local 3. Workers at nonunion sites are only paid $6 to $7 an hour with no benefits — way too low to make ends meet. Speaking of the need to organize the nonunion sites, Sevakis said, “The union has to keep the bottom wage high so the standards won’t fall for everyone else.”

For 19 years, Pam Owens has worked at the Millender Center in downtown Detroit. Now the Detroit district chair on Local 3’s executive board, she is ready to defend her union’s gains in the upcoming negotiations with one of the nation’s largest building service contractors, ABM, and others in the area. “Holding the line on health care” will be a key issue in the upcoming contract talks, Owens said. “We’ve struggled too long and too hard to give in,” she said. “We are not going back to poverty wages and no health care.”

LaKarroll McCray, vice president of Unite Here Local 24, Casino Division, said she and other Unite Here members joined the rally because “we’re like family.”

“When you work in a group, you have to stick together and when you’re in a union you have to give support to other unions,” she said. Gesturing toward the marchers — Black, Brown and white, with many young participants — she added, “This is the new generation. Unions are very much alive.”

Coming all the way from Toledo on a bus that also picked up members in Cleveland was SEIU member Tim Andrews. Andrews, a maintenance worker at a Toledo apartment complex, said the workers there have been in the union for two years.

Before the union came, he said, some workers would go three or more years without raises. His contract expires in 2007 and he came to Detroit because it “builds camaraderie in the union. I’m coming here to help and next year we might have to call on Detroit workers to help us in our contract fight.”

For green jobs: Time for an oil change in America

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 06:52:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — When Exxon Mobil reported 2006 first quarter profits of $8.4 billion, it put the energy giant on track to outstrip its record $36 billion profits in 2005. Last week’s “Take Back America” conference here noted that while Exxon Mobil is a big winner, millions of Americans are the losers in an economy based on fossil fuels and denial of the human and environmental damage it causes.

“A bevy of Exxon Mobil-funded skeptics continue to ignore, insult and create baseless doubts” about the environmental crisis we face, Larry J. Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation, told the June 12-14 national gathering of 2,000 progressive leaders and activists. “It’s time for an oil change in America.”

With that spirit, the conference launched the Apollo Challenge, a grassroots movement projecting energy independence, new technology, alternative fuels and 3 million “green collar” jobs by 2020.

The jobs and environment plan has been sparked by the Apollo Alliance, a national coalition endorsed by 23 unions including the United Steelworkers, which represents oil workers, and the United Mine Workers, representing coal miners. The unions have joined hands with environmentalists like the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters and small businesses to build a movement that actor and environmental activist Robert Redford called “the real American voice speaking.”

“Don’t talk to me about jobs versus the environment; it’s jobs for the environment,” Apollo Alliance Executive Director Jerome Ringo told the meeting. Hailing from Lake Charles in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” Ringo is the first African American head of the National Wildlife Federation. He and his family are evacuees from Hurricane Rita.

Ringo said, “African Americans and people of color have been disproportionately impacted when it comes to poor environmental policies. Where there is a railroad track, there’s a Black neighborhood. You want to find a sewage treatment plant, you find a Black neighborhood. You find chemical plants, you find a Black neighborhood. We are suffering and experiencing Category 5 events and our White House was suffering from Category 5 denial.”

Apollo is gaining traction at the state level, Ringo said. He cited Washington state where the Apollo coalition convened in 2004. Rich Feldman, state Apollo coordinator and executive director of the King County AFL-CIO Workers Center, noted that Apollo had a troubled beginning in Washington, despite the state’s “green” image. “Remember, we had the ‘war in the woods,’ and wind energy developers are not the most union-friendly group in the world,” he said. But, “in just two years, working together, we convinced the state Legislature to make state-owned buildings ‘green,’ set a renewable fuel standard on the state’s fleet and investment in solar electric power starting with training for workers in a new industry.”

Los Angeles launched its Apollo coalition this February. Its executive director, Jennifer Ito, said they began by sending 40 teams door to door in targeted neighborhoods talking to voters. Their goal is to create 5,000 “green collar” jobs by retrofitting public buildings, estimated to cost $100 million. “We organized people of color against the banks and developers,” she said. “It is time the victims of poor environmental choices and economic discrimination were at the table and heard.”

Other local Apollo coalitions have sprung up in New York City and Putnam County, N.Y., Florida, Trenton, N.J., and Portland, Ore.

“Apollo is growing,” said Ringo. “This year our goal, in addition to new coalitions, is to sign up 250,000 new activists, people who live in neighborhoods like Cancer Alley in Louisiana. We are building toward a peaceful future through economic justice and national security through energy independence.”

More information about the Apollo Alliance is at www.apolloalliance.org.

Congress Hotel strike alive and well

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 06:44:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Three years to the day since workers at the downtown Congress Hotel went on strike, the strikers and their union, Unite Here Local 1, joined leaders of the city’s religious, labor and community groups for a funeral-themed rally.

The June 15 “funeral” was held to mourn the loss of quality at what was once a world-class hotel, quality that has plummeted since management attacked the union, workers said.

Hundreds picketed in front of the hotel, chanting, singing, clapping noisemakers and holding signs. Afterward, as a band played mournful, funeral-like music, the crowd marched around the building carrying a black coffin, declaring the hotel “dead,” and then giving it a “proper burial.”

The Congress Hotel “is stinking up the town like a festering corpse with a stench of death,” said Henry Tamarin, president of Local 1, Chicago’s 14,000-member hospitality workers’ union. “This hotel, once a great hotel, has now died,” he said. “Let’s bury it.” But, Tamarin was quick to add, “the strike against the Congress is alive and well.”

About 130 workers walked off the job in June 2003 when the hotel unilaterally imposed a 7 percent wage cut, eliminated family health insurance and pension benefits, and threatened to outsource union jobs.

At the rally, members of United Food and Commercial Workers, Service Employees, Teamsters, United Steelworkers, United Electrical Workers and Jobs with Justice — all wearing matching union-made T-shirts — marched in the picket line in a colorful display of solidarity with the strikers.

The union estimates the hotel could have made at least $70 million more in revenue if it had been operating at average downtown occupancy and room rate levels over the past three years.

“We are struggling for equality and for a better future for our children,” said Delores Contreras, who worked at the Congress Hotel for three years, and now works at the Radisson Hotel.

“We are all human and we deserve respect as workers,” she said. “Over the last three years the strike has made us strong. We have to work for a better life as immigrants, to pay the rent, bills and feed our children.”

Contreras’ 11-year-old son, Alejandro Veldez, said he missed school that day to show support for his mother and the strike. He told the World that when he grows up he wants to help other unions and strikers “because the union fights and gives a voice for the workers.”

According to leaders in the hospitality industry, the hotel is an embarrassment that undermines proper standards. Hundreds of customers have reportedly complained about poor service and unsafe, unsanitary conditions since workers walked off the job in June 2003. Some customers even admitted that if they had been informed about the strike they would not have booked rooms at a struck hotel.

Marc Gordon, president of the Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association, testified at a hearing at City Hall that the hotel “has long been plagued by a lack of proper maintenance, cleanliness and service.”

Rosa Sabala, a mother of three, worked at the Congress Hotel for seven years. She told the crowd at the rally she was sad to hear about complaints from the customers. “We made sure the hotel was always clean, so that we could give the customer the best service,” she said in Spanish. Today, she added, “it’s like the hotel is dead.”

“We are workers, and we only ask for justice,” she said.

Omar Lara agreed. He worked at the Congress for 10 years. “We are hoping to negotiate a contract for medical benefits and better salaries,” he told the World. “We are fighting a just struggle.”

Another worker, Gus Greer, an African American who worked at the hotel for 35 years, told this reporter that when he heard about the strike he walked out and has not looked back since. Currently he works as a bus driver and is not sure if he would return to his former banquet and bartending duties if a contract is won. Nevertheless, three years later, Greer says he continues to join the picket line, putting in at least 15 hours every week.

Asked whether he has a message to his fellow strikers, he said, “Don’t go back in there until you get that contract!”

Duke Energy workers smell a rat

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 08:24:00 +0000

HOUSTON — A giant inflatable rat was the featured participant in a protest at Duke Energy headquarters here by members of Pipeline Workers Local 798. The workers came from Tulsa, Okla., to protest the unfair practices of Duke Energy contractor Sunland Construction. One pipeliner told the World that nonunion “rat” Sunland provides lower quality work than a union workforce, with worse worker safety.

Sunland, based in Eunice, La., has an abysmal record on working conditions and standards, the Pipeline Workers union says, including: “worker deaths on the job, alcohol and drug abuse, severe worker injuries, non-enforcement of safety policies, OSHA non-compliance, environmental infractions, community disregard, automotive accidents, unfair labor practice violations, high weld reject rates and shoddy workmanship.” The union asks, “Does Duke Energy care more about the //$Bottom Dollar$// than they do about safety?” and “Should Duke Energy hire contractors who have a poor record like this to build or repair high pressure natural gas pipelines?”

Protesters carried posters with pictures of injured workers. One showed a man in a coma after a pipe fell on him. Another was of a worker whose back was broken by a pipe. Other signs displayed copies of a May 17 newspaper article about the most recent worker death on the job.

The article, from the Smyth County, Va., News and Messenger, told the story of the May 15 death of Sunland worker David Lee Burrow, 45, of Pharr, Texas, who died after becoming trapped between a side crane dozer and his pickup truck.

The pipeline workers were joined by area union members and others who traveled from Texarkana, Texas, and as far as Washington, D.C., to express their solidarity. Workers passing by in a pickup truck waved their support. Some company officials passed by but were not nearly so friendly.

The peaceful event was monitored by a unit of the Houston Police Department mounted patrol. HPD brought a huge trailer with horses to the scene but they were kept a distance from the protest. The commercial media ignored this event, as usual.

Gulf Coast Update

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 07:56:00 +0000

Levees ‘in name only,’ says report

The Army Corps of Engineers released its report June 1 outlining the massive failure of the levees system. “The hurricane protection in New Orleans and southeast Louisiana was a system in name only.”

The 6,000-plus-page document included details on engineering and design failures that led to the storm surge overwhelming the city’s outer levees and breaking through flood walls within New Orleans, putting 80 percent of the city underwater.

More than 1,570 people died in New Orleans from the storm and flood. The 2006 hurricane season began June 1.

AFL-CIO invests $1 billion for affordable housing

The AFL-CIO plans to invest $1 billion to develop 10,000 affordable homes and a new downtown hotel in New Orleans.

The investment is the labor coalition’s most ambitious funding project ever. It also is one of the largest yet for New Orleans and seeks to bring new housing to a city where Hurricane Katrina destroyed more than 100,000 homes.

The money will come from the AFL-CIO’s 40-year-old Housing Investment Trust, which invests worker pensions in affordable housing and requires union labor on the projects.

In addition, the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO is designing a new workforce development program in the region. Together, the programs will create new construction and hotel jobs, and job training opportunities for area residents.

Extend jobless benefits for 80,000 workers

On June 4, over 80,000 unemployed workers in the Gulf Coast region were cut off from jobless benefits, including some 13,000 in Mississippi and another 68,000 in Louisiana. Weekly unemployment checks in Louisiana average just $104. The Katrina Information Network urged supporters to call their senators right away, pressing them to support S 3030, a bill to extend jobless benefits by 13 weeks for Gulf Coast families.

Public housing residents reclaim apartments

Public housing residents from New Orleans were forced to take matters into their own hands June 10. Residents from the Florida Housing Development returned to their apartments to continue the cleanup that the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) has so far refused to do. Tens of thousands are still without permanent, secure and affordable housing. Survivors Village, in the 3800 block of St. Bernard Avenue, was set up to serve as a temporary center for residents to challenge the unfair practices of HANO.

Undocumented face abuse, hazardous conditions

Undocumented immigrant workers helping to rebuild New Orleans are working in hazardous conditions without protective gear and earning far less than their legal counterparts, a study says.

Nearly one-third of the undocumented immigrants interviewed by researchers reported working with harmful substances and in dangerous conditions, while 19 percent said they were not given any protective equipment, according to the study by professors at Tulane University and the University of California at Berkeley.

Immigrants without legal papers also were paid significantly less than their legal counterparts, earning on average $10 an hour, compared with $16.50 for documented workers, the study says.

Many of the immigrant workers were lured to New Orleans by contractors’ promises of jobs and high wages. Because so many are here illegally, the study says, they are especially vulnerable to exploitation and violations of labor law.

The study estimates that one-quarter of the construction workers in New Orleans are undocumented.

Gulf Coast Update is compiled by Terrie Albano (talbano@pww.org).

Rally fights deportation: Keep families together

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 05:57:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Over 100 community supporters, including religious leaders and elected officials, rallied here in front of the immigration court building June 1 as about two-dozen former employees of IFCO Systems, who were arrested as part of a nationwide raid by federal agents in April, went to their first deportation hearing.

Last month 1,187 employees of IFCO Systems in some 40 towns and cities in 26 states were arrested, including 26 in Chicago. Many immigrant rights activists believe that the recent raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents of the Department of Homeland Security were an attempt by the Bush administration to intimidate the growing movement for progressive immigration reform.

Immigrant rights leaders at the rally demanded that these workers have their deportations set aside and get their jobs back. Participants also publicly signed an open letter to President Bush calling for a moratorium on all raids, arrests and deportations until the national legislative process can arrive at a new immigration law. The Chicago City Council recently passed a resolution along the same lines.

The morning of the rally, one group of workers was granted a four-month extension on a final decision on deportation. A different judge gave the afternoon group only two months.

Elvira Arellano, president of La Familia Latina Unida, who is facing deportation and possible separation from her son in August, went on a 22-day hunger strike that ended the day of the hearing and rally.

She told the World that she was fasting “principally to tell Bush to reform the current immigration policies and to keep families together, for workers rights and an end to deportations.”

“If there is no legalization process, our people are going to continue dying crossing the border,” she said. “We are going to continue fighting for and supporting the workers.”

Arellano thinks that the recently passed Senate bill on immigration reform is tackling difficult issues, but does not do real justice to the immigrant community.

“We need a bill for everyone,” she said. “In general, we are not criminals. What we are essentially talking about is the reunification of families, of workers.”

Flor Crisostomo, another hunger striker at the rally, was also one of the workers arrested in April. She was given an extension on her deportation order.

“It’s a sacrifice what we are doing,” she told reporters. “We are doing this for the millions of undocumented workers everywhere.”

“If one of my co-workers has to be deported today, I will continue the hunger strike,” she told the World at the rally.

Young children missed school to be at the rally and picketed alongside their mothers and fathers, holding signs that read, “Kids must grow with their family” and “Dignity for the worker, reunification now.”

Jorge Romero, 12, a son of one of the IFCO workers, spoke during the rally.

“I did not want to see my dad taken from me,” he told the World afterward, “and I didn’t go to school so I can remember this day.”

He mentioned how his little brother began to cry nights before when watching the news on television, and is scared that his father is going to be taken away.

“I hope that they don’t take him to Mexico,” he said. “My dad makes us happy in the house, he makes us laugh.”

A little girl began to address the press at the rally, to make a statement saying she did not go to school that day so she could be there with her grandfather. She broke down and began to cry as the cameras pointed at her.

Emma Lozano, executive director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a local immigrant rights group, said she was glad the judges gave extensions to the workers regarding deportation. She also spoke about the torture and trauma being caused for the children in this process.

“We will not stop and we will not accept the injustice being done to these families,” she said. “We need a moratorium to stop deportations.”

Lozano said that while some believe a political shift in Congress this November holds the best promise for improving immigrant rights, the reality is that raids, arrests and deportations continue to haunt and separate the immigrant community right now.

However, Lozano stressed that she plans to lead two campaigns: one for mass citizenship training for undocumented immigrants, and another for mass voter registration.

“Please fight with us to keep these families together,” said Lozano at the rally. “We need to change America, we are all America.”

After waiting anxiously in the hall outside the courtroom, while their children played, family members began to sob after hearing that their loved ones have only a couple of months before facing possible deportation.

Roberto Lopez, director of the Pueblo Sin Fronteras Legal Program, consoled the group in the hall, saying, “We have two months to work with, we’ll get more signatures and talk to our elected officials. We are going to have to keep on working, that’s the only thing we can do now.”

$5.15 an hour wont cut it: Campaigns to raise the minimum wage sweep the country

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 05:48:00 +0000

Because Congress has refused to raise the $5.15 an hour minimum wage since 1997, coalitions of labor, religious and community groups are organizing voters to do so, one state at a time. So far 21 states and Washington, D.C., have done so. Similar campaigns are under way in another dozen states.

On June 5 several busloads of low-wage and unemployed workers organized by the Philadelphia Unemployment Project joined hundreds of other Pennsylvanians at the State Capitol in Harrisburg to demand an increase in the state minimum from $5.15 to $7.15 an hour. Organizers say raising the minimum to $7.15 would increase the income of some 427,000 Pennsylvanians by $4,000 a year.

Although on April 5 the state House of Representatives passed an increase to $6.15 in July 2006 and $7.15 in July 2007, Senate Majority Leader David J. “Chip” Brightbill (R-Lebanon) has prevented a similar bill from coming to the Senate floor.

Brandy Russell, an organizer for the Raise the Minimum Wage Coalition, said the bill would likely pass the Senate if it were put to a vote. “I’ve been counting heads and we have a substantial majority of the Senate supporting the $7.15 an hour minimum wage,” he said.

At the June 5 rally, chants included “$7.15 and nothing in between” and “Raise the minimum wage now!”

State Senators Stewart Greenleaf (R-Willow Grove), Vincent Hughes (D-Philadelphia) and Tina Tartaglione (D-Philadelphia) promised to do everything in their power to press the Republican leadership to let the Senate vote.

Linda Williams, a low-wage supermarket worker from Allegheny County, emphasized that even $7.15 an hour is not a living wage and told how working families are suffering.

State AFL-CIO President Bill George warned the lawmakers, “If you don’t increase the minimum wage, you won’t get any votes from AFL-CIO members in November.” George said studies show that, contrary to claims by those who oppose an increase, not one job has been lost due to raising the minimum wage, nor has small business growth decreased.

“Raising the minimum wage is a moral issue and the clergy should be in the forefront of this campaign,” said the Rev. Randy Barge of Philadelphia’s Calvin Presbyterian Church, who chaired the rally.

On June 1 Louisiana became the most recent state to raise its minimum wage, boosting it from $5.15 to $6.15. State Sen. Charles Jones (D-Monroe) tried unsuccessfully to raise it to $7. “I know hospital workers who are so poor that if they get sick they can’t afford to lie in the bed they made this morning because they have no health care,” Jones said.

On April 10 Arkansas hiked its minimum to $6.25. Florida, Michigan and Maine have also recently increased their minimum wages.

In Ohio the Coalition for a Fair Minimum Wage is collecting signatures for a constitutional amendment on the November ballot, to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.85 with yearly increases for inflation. (See related story, page 4.)

In California the Assembly and Senate have both passed measures to raise the minimum wage from $6.75 to $7.75 by July 2008 and index it to inflation, potentially benefiting over 1.4 million workers. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supports the increase but opposes indexing. Meanwhile, signatures have been submitted for a ballot measure to set the minimum at $8.75 by January 2009 and index it to inflation.

Raising the minimum wage for all workers will be a key issue to get voters to the polls in November, says the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, a coalition of 60 faith-based and community organizations. “It would take $9 in 2006 to buy what the minimum wage bought in 1968,” said Holly Sklar and the Rev. Dr. Paul Sherry in their report for the coalition. “A just minimum wage is good for workers, business and our future.”

Rage for the Wage high schoolers lead the way

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 08:34:00 +0000

They could not find enough seats so they sat on the Capitol steps. Over 100 high school students from across Ohio gathered in Columbus on May 17 to present their minimum wage petitions to the committee of petitioners.

Decked out in their bright green “Raise the Wage” T-shirts, students individually marched to the podium and handed their petitions to state Sen. C.J. Prentiss, Piettie Talley from the Ohio AFL-CIO and Katy Heins from Let Justice Roll. A few minutes earlier Jonathan Lykes, a 10th grader from Shaw High School in East Cleveland, had electrified the crowd with an original poem. The refrain “$5.15 is an injustice” captured the theme for the day of the student-led gathering in Columbus. Other Ohio leaders including House Minority Leader Joyce Beatty, state Sens. Marc Dann, Ray Miller, Tom Roberts and Dale Miller, Ohio Democratic Party Chair Chris Redfern and State Rep. Barbara Sykes watched as students from many high schools submitted over 2,000 signatures.

A few hours before at the Ohio Education Association headquarters, students spoke about their experiences gathering signatures. One student talked about how she will remember what she did for her whole life. Another shed a tear as she described petitioning outside a building where people were waiting to receive clothing they could not afford. The tightly packed crowd rose to their feet when Lykes rhythmically inspired young people to stand up against poverty and economic injustice. Nervous at first, students gained confidence as they talked about the minimum wage campaign as the first, but not the last, time in their life to raise their voice for change.

As part of the Annenberg Civic Engagement Project, Columbus students had coined their own slogan, “Rage for the Wage,” written researched booklets, and even spoken at other high schools urging students to join them in the campaign to raise Ohio’s minimum wage and collect signatures for the constitutional amendment. The students from Shaw had stood in the rain on the primary Election Day to collect signatures. A whole busload of students journeyed to Columbus with another large contingent of active Shaw seniors left behind to take their senior final exams.

The teachers, despite being preoccupied with field trip forms, bus passes, and all the accouterments of school culture, quietly sat beaming as their students took the lead to force an unresponsive state government to take seriously the lives of the working poor.

The Columbus event culminates a six-month project to involve high school students in the campaign to raise Ohio’s minimum wage. Over 600 students volunteered across Ohio to petition and most of these students could not come to Columbus. It’s not easy getting a substitute, field trip approval and traveling hundreds of miles. At least 200 petitions have already been sent in.

Piettie Tally from the AFL-CIO described how a friend of hers in Toledo said she had signed a minimum wage petition. Talley asked what labor union member was circulating the petition. Her friend replied, “Oh, she was not from a labor union, she was a student at a Toledo high school.”

What’s next for high school students? Once the constitutional amendment gets on the November ballot we will reach out to students in high schools where at least 30 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced lunch. We will then set up leadership development institutes for teachers and students to plan a campaign in September based on voter registration for eligible young people and for their parents, relatives and friends. In October we will then produce a high level of visibility on the need to vote in November to raise Ohio’s minimum wage.

We gathered in Columbus on May 17, the 52nd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. As I pointed out as we began the student presentations, for a short time in history we had a government that made equality and opportunity a priority. We no longer have that government on the state and federal level. It’s up to the young people themselves to force the government to regain its commitment to justice.

Can we imagine what the government would do if low income young people voted in the same numbers as high income senior citizens? That is the next step. With the right resources, finances and focus young people and their teachers can lead the way.

Michael Charney is a long-time teacher and community activist/organizer who recently retired as second vice president of the Cleveland Teachers Union. This article was originally published at www.clevelandaflcio.org/blog.html and is reprinted by permission of the author.

National union conventions take up single-payer health care

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 07:45:00 +0000

The 33rd Constitutional Convention of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union has gone on record urging Congress to enact HR 676, a bill introduced by Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) to implement a single-payer health care system in the U.S. The ILWU, whose convention met the third week in May, represents all dockworkers in West Coast ports from San Diego to Vancouver.

Several other international union conventions this summer are slated to consider the legislation in response to resolutions from their local union bodies. Included in this list are the United Auto Workers, National Association of Letter Carriers, Plumbers and Teamsters.

Supporters emphasize that HR 676 would cover every person in the U. S. for all necessary medical care including prescription drugs, hospitalization, dental, mental health, home health, physical therapy, substance abuse treatment, vision care and long-term care. HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. HR 676 would save billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private health insurance industry and HMOs.

In West Mifflin, Pa., UAW Local 544, which represents workers at the General Motors Fisher Body plant, has endorsed the Conyers legislation. Further west, in Michigan, the state convention of the American Postal Workers Union adopted a similar resolution. One state over, in Indiana, three groups of steelworkers have endorsed the legislation including USW Sub-District 4 of District 7, SOAR Chapter 30-18 in Plymouth, and USW Local 12775 in Portage.

Seventy-one members of Congress have now signed on to the bill.

Delphi cuts devastate Midwest town

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 07:37:00 +0000

ANDERSON, Ind. (PAI) — In the 1970s, UAW Local 662, including workers at the Delphi Auto Parts plant in Anderson, Ind., had 17,000 members. In the early ’90s, less than half that remained. Now only 722 are left, and that number is dropping fast.

Delphi is going to close the doors on its High Energy Ignition Plant in Anderson by early 2008. It is one of 20 Delphi plants scheduled for extinction.

The drastic cuts are part of Delphi’s plan, presented to a bankruptcy court in New York City on March 31. It calls for firing three-fourths of the firm’s 34,000 U.S. workers and huge wage cuts — from an average of $27 an hour to an average of $16 an hour, within a year’s time — for the rest.

The broad impact of Delphi’s closing on the town of Anderson is obvious. As the company pulls all the good jobs out of the town, property prices are plummeting. A $200,000 home built three years ago might fetch $150,000 now. Most of the higher-seniority people will be gone in the next few months as they “flow back,” or move to other General Motors locations where they have transfer rights. The population of Anderson is already down almost 20,000 people in the past 10 years.

But beyond the big numbers are the little numbers that mean even more. Local 662 was a good neighbor. Every summer it sponsored basketball camps at the college, free to the kids. Workers at UAW Local 662 contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United Way of Madison County. They held fish fries to raise money to buy food baskets for the poor at Christmas. They held food drives to support the food banks and supported the Salvation Army.

One worker, who is being forced to retire, told me of an old guy that came to look forward to the box of food that the union used to give him at Christmas. When he heard about what’s happening, the old man said, “I guess I’m not going to get that anymore.” The Delphi worker replied: “No, I’ll take care of it myself if I have to.”

—Indiana Labor News

While profits soar, two more miners die

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 07:12:00 +0000

PITTSBURGH — The coal that miners extract at the Miller Brothers strip mine in Breathitt County, Ky., keeps the lights on in the chambers of Congress. On May 23, the Senate passed the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act (MINER). That same day Steven Bryant, 23, went to work at Miller Brothers and died. The next day, Todd Upton, 34, died from head injuries underground at International Coal Group’s Sycamore #2 mine in Harrison County, W.Va. Both mines are nonunion.

As the first five months of 2006 come to a close, 34 coal miners will not cheer their kids on at Little League, hike, hunt or fish the stunning hills surrounding their small communities, slice a fresh tomato from their garden or walk down the aisle to get married. They died at work. Those five months were more deadly for U.S. miners than all of 2005.

The Senate passed the MINER act as anger roiled the Appalachian coal fields following the January Sago disaster which killed 12 miners. In almost record time, senators from all 50 states approved the measure introduced by Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.), upgrading mine safety for the first time since 1977. It hikes the fines against companies for safety violations from a maximum of $60,000 to $220,000, requires that rescue teams be based within an hour’s travel time of mines, and gives coal corporations three years to install modern communication and tracking devices. The House is debating the measure.

At a press conference announcing the Senate action, United Mine Workers of America president Cecil Roberts urged the House to pass the bill immediately. “This carnage must stop. The MINER act, as passed by the Senate, will help do that,” he said.

Roberts said the union is seeking an injunction in federal district court to require the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration to immediately conduct random testing of oxygen-generating, self-contained self-rescuers (SCSR). The suit asks the court to order increased training for miners, including using the SCSR devices underground instead of just in a classroom.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) wants to reduce the timeframe to introduce communication devices from three years to 15 months, provide at least two days of emergency oxygen and boost fines against companies defying federal safety regulations. He presented a letter signed by three Sago families supporting his changes.

“Safety has to be put before production and it’s got to be put before profits,” said Deborah Hamner, whose husband of 32 years, George Hamner, died at Sago.

Joe Main, former UMWA safety director and now a union consultant, told The Associated Press that elected officials need to look at forced overtime as well. Corporations are so focused on profits that they are working miners longer instead of hiring to increase production. According to the Kentucky Department for Workforce Development, the average workweek for the state’s estimated 14,800 coal miners is 49.5 hours.

Coal has skyrocketed to $64 a ton on the spot market. At ICG’s Sycamore mine where Todd Upton died, 34 miners produced 69,000 tons, or $4.4 million worth of coal, in 2005. In 2006, ICG projects an increase to 250,000 tons, or $16 million worth, increasing profits by 400 percent.

Guilty! Enron workers cheer Lay, Skilling verdicts

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 07:03:00 +0000

HOUSTON – Enron workers who lost billions in pension benefits when the company collapsed are voicing satisfaction that at last top Enron executives have been found guilty of a long list of crimes that plunged the company into bankruptcy.

Former Enron Chairman Ken Lay and former CEO Jeffrey Skilling were convicted of multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy May 25 at the federal courthouse in Houston. Lay was convicted in two separate trials on 10 counts of conspiracy, securities fraud, wire fraud and bank fraud and for making false statements to banks. The jury found Skilling guilty on 19 of 28 counts.

Charles Priestwood, 67, who spent 33 years as an Enron pipeline worker, is one of thousands of plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit asking the court to order Enron to pay their pension benefits. His retirement package, once valued at $1.3 million, is now worthless. “I used to spend half an hour a month paying off every bill,” Priestwood told the World in a phone interview from his home outside Houston. “Now I spend 30 days every month trying to find the money to pay my bills.”

He said he and many other former Enron workers followed the trial and gave a little cheer when a jury found both Lay and Skilling guilty.

“I helped build Enron,” Priestwood said. “I kept the pressure in the pipelines steady all those years. Ninety-nine percent of the workers out in the field were honest. It was just that little cream at the top, the CEO and his cronies, who destroyed Enron. It was the most hurtful thing I’ve ever lived through.” Priestwood says now he looks back at his life and sees “one big void.”

The collapse of Enron four years ago put over 4,000 people out of work. Thousands of people lost their life savings. The AFL-CIO helped a number of Enron’s former employees with the transition back to work and advocated for decent benefits and a share of what resources were left.

Richard Shaw, secretary-treasurer of the Harris County AFL-CIO, which includes Houston, was active in support of the Enron workers. He told the World he was pleased by the verdict. “Finally, the top people at Enron are going to be held accountable for the massive loss of jobs and pensions they caused,” he said. “There might be some justice in the end for these workers. But we still have a long way to go with the appeals process.”

Priestwood expressed anger that the Enron workers “are still waiting for our day in court” five years after the company went bankrupt. “The defendants got their money. They want to keep our claims quiet and never let them come out in a trial. We were lied to all the way down from the federal level. They were telling us Enron stock should be trading at $144 to $150 a share. It turned out to be 40 cents a share.”

He blasted the obscene salaries and bonuses reaped by corporate CEOs. “These salaries are so out of whack, like one who is paid $123 million a year. Exxon-Mobil CEOs get salaries that are as sick as they were at Enron. We need laws and regulations to protect people against that kind of greed.”

Behind the cover of deregulation, Enron “gamed” the California energy market with rolling blackouts to buttress their phony claims of “energy shortages.” Enron and its accomplices gave this scam code names like “Fat Boy” and “Get Shorty.” Ken Lay met with Vice President Cheney and persuaded him to stop the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from intervening in the California power market. This cost Californians billions of dollars and resulted in a windfall for Enron.

President Bush was known to be very fond of Lay, whom he called “Kenny Boy.” Lay’s family donated about $140,000 to Bush’s political campaigns. With his encouragement, Enron employees gave Bush about $600,000 in political donations. Enron executives were major advisors to Cheney’s secret Energy Policy Task Force that pushed for across-the-board deregulation of gas and electric utilities.