People Before Profit blog

Health care piracy at Treasure Island

Fri, 26 Mar 2004 04:58:00 +0000

CHICAGO – Grocery workers at two local supermarket chains here are appealing to consumers to boycott their stores in support of their battle to hold on to health care and pension benefits.

Hand-billing shoppers in front of six northside stores of Treasure Island and two of Potash Brothers, the members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 881 charge that management proposals for their new contract would eliminate eligibility for health care for up to 50 percent of those currently covered, and make costs unaffordable for the rest.

Consumers were receptive to the workers’ message, Elizabeth Drea, spokesperson for Local 881, told the World.

“People understand the high cost of health care and losing pensions,” she reported. The local was already forced to file an unfair labor practice charge against Treasure Island, she said, when management began taking individuals employees aside to discuss changing their health plans. Federal labor law prohibits employers from changing wages or benefits without negotiating with the union.

Both supermarket chains also insist on replacing guaranteed pensions with risky 401(k) plans. But Ronald Powell, Local 881 president, told reporters that the union would not “allow them to gamble the employees’ guaranteed pensions on the stock market.”

“Until there’s a real fix for the health care crisis in this country, it will continue to be an issue in all negotiations,” said Drea, “and not just for retail workers.”

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

Show us the jobs bus on eight state tour

Fri, 26 Mar 2004 04:50:00 +0000

Fifty-one people with 51 stories of their jobless dilemmas hit the road March 24 on an AFL-CIO-sponsored “Show us the jobs” bus tour. Starting off from St. Louis, workers, students, clergy, retirees and web activists will travel throughout the Midwest to Washington, D.C. to highlight the real economic situation facing millions of the jobless and underemployed and the working poor.

“I think we need to get the word out there that the economy is not as rosy as people are saying,” Kevin Gregory, 41, of Millinocket, Maine, told reporters. After 17 years at a paper mill Gregory was laid off in January 2003. He and his family now rely on food banks. “I’ve had to swallow my pride and get help,” Gregory said.

The bus tour counters efforts by Bush and administration officials to promote – under the slogan “Jobs and Growth” – tax cuts for the rich, which has resulted in a “jobless recovery.” Stops are planned in Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, all considered “battleground states” that could determine who wins the White House in November. Jobs is one of the top issues among the voters.

Currently there are 8.3 million jobless – officially. Lack of jobs has caused another 2.8 million workers to either drop out, or not enter the labor market, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The long-term unemployment level is the worst in 20 years; 22.1 percent of the jobless were out of work for six months or more in 2003.

The plight faced by the long-term unemployed has been aggravated by the Republican-controlled Congress, which refused to extend unemployment benefits last December even though $17 billion sits in the Federal Unemployment Trust Fund. Benefits have run out for over three-quarters of a million people. The number is expected to grow to 2 million by mid-year. Nine states have set new records for the number of workers who have exhausted their state unemployment benefits.

The unemployment figures among African American men are especially grave. A study by the New York-based Community Service Society found only 52 percent of Black men ages 16-64 held jobs in New York City in 2003. It was 76 percent for white men, 66 percent for Hispanic men and 57 percent for Black women. Researchers in the field said these findings are consistent with Midwestern cities.

Racism in hiring during this tough “jobless recovery” was highlighted in a recent study that found that white men with prison records were more likely to be hired than Black men without prison records. The disproportionate jobless rate on Black families has not been a major issue in the election campaign, so far, although African Americans are an important base for the Democratic and anti-Bush coalition.

The AFL-CIO issued a special report and “toolkit” on jobs, which projects a nine-point job creation program. The toolkit and the bus tour emphasize “outsourcing” as the reason for loss of jobs, although most economists point to “labor-saving” technology as the main obstacle to job growth. For the AFL-CIO jobs toolkit go to www.aflcio.org or call (202) 637-5010.

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

Ohio outrage: Retirees shafted

Fri, 26 Mar 2004 02:55:00 +0000

Weirton Steel Corp. announced this week that it would cut off health care benefits for its 10,000 retirees effective April 1. The Steubenville, Ohio-based company had petitioned the bankruptcy court to void its union contract with the Independent Steelworkers Union and do away with its contractual obligation to pay the benefits owed to its retirees. The ISU fought the company petition and was able to postpone the cutoff, but the bankruptcy court ultimately granted Weirton’s request.

The ISU is an independent union representing only Weirton’s workers. It is not part of the United Steelworkers of America, but it cooperates with the USWA in contracts, strikes and other campaigns.

“Deep concern and fear is sweeping through retirees in this area,” according to Dave Cossett, communications director for the ISU. The union is working with the likely new owner of the company, Cleveland-based International Steel Group, in an attempt to set up a VEBA (Voluntary Employee Benefits Agreement) that could provide some limited continuation of health care benefits to the embattled retirees. ISG, the nation’s second-largest integrated steel maker, is expected to acquire Weirton in the next few months, but it refuses to assume liability for retiree benefits.

Ohio has suffered the loss of over 280,000 manufacturing jobs since George W. Bush occupied the White House. The Weirton/ISG retiree benefit cutoff is the latest in a series of body blows hammering retired steelworkers. About 208,000 retirees have lost benefits in the wave of steel bankruptcies that have swept the nation in the last three years. Forty-four U.S. steel companies have gone into bankruptcy, resulting in over 250,000 steel retirees having their pension plans taken over by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC).

“Congress and the president should be paying attention to thousands of retirees losing health care instead of worrying about who’s marrying who,” said Cossett.

The PBGC was set up by Congress 27 years ago, in response to union pressure, to protect workers’ pensions when companies go bankrupt. That mission changed a year and a half ago, though, when President Bush appointed right-wing ideologue Steven Kandarian to head that agency.

Kandarian’s first act was to refuse to pay the pensions of RTI steelworkers in Lorain, Massillon and Canton, Ohio, Gary, Ind., and Lackawanna, N.Y. Since that time, retirees have lost benefits at many other steel companies, including Acme, Bethlehem, LTV, National, LaClede, NW and CSC.

“The PBGC is launching preemptive strikes on us, just like Bush did on Iraq,” said a prominent official at USWA headquarters in Pittsburgh. The PBGC, which used to be flush, has run up an $11.8 billion deficit during Bush’s rule.

The USWA has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the PBGC’s refusal to make pension payments to RTI retirees, and to retirees in other areas. Federal Judge Peter Economis ruled in the union’s favor in September, ordering the agency to pay. The PBGC, however, refused to comply and appealed the decision, vowing to “seize back the pensions if successful.”

Angry demonstrations, rallies, resolutions from public bodies and public meetings have swept the Ohio Valley, demanding that the corporate obligations to retired steelworkers be paid.

Ohio is considered a crucial state to both sides in the upcoming election, but Bush is in trouble here due to the continuing economic misery. In his most recent trip to the state two weeks ago, he was confronted by hundreds of angry union demonstrators and their allies in Cleveland.

The author can be reached at bruce@admiral.cc.

Cleveland brings out big rat to greet Bush

Fri, 19 Mar 2004 06:21:00 +0000

CLEVELAND – With just three days notice, hundreds of angry anti-Bush protesters showed up to greet Dubya on his first visit here this election year. Gathered around a huge rubber rat, the crowd roared, “Bush must go!” Bush came to Cleveland on March 10 to address a conference of businesswomen.

The crowd – steelworkers in black USWA jackets, sheet metal workers in yellow shirts, electrical workers, unionists from CWA, teachers, SEIU members and others – lined St. Clair Avenue. “Re-defeat Bush,” “Save workers’ pensions – kick Bush out,” “Bush – stop pissing on us and telling us it’s raining,” “Save democracy – defeat Bush,” read some of the signs.

Dozens of Sierra Club members held a large banner reading, “We need clean power, not dirty lies!” Other signs called for peace and condemned the illegal invasion of Iraq. A small handful of Bush supporters tried, unsuccessfully, to infiltrate the rally.

The protest turned into an impromptu rally, led by Cleveland AFL-CIO Executive Secretary John Ryan. “Just look at what Bush has helped us organize in only a couple days!” called out Ryan. “We’ve never been so united!”

Other speakers included members of the Cleveland City Council and a leader of the Laborers Union. It was then decided that, regardless of the so-called “security lines,” the crowd should march to the Convention Center a block away where Bush was speaking.

Several hundred marchers stomped over to the center, chanting loudly, “Bush go home.” As Bush left, the march ended. With the bullhorn, Ryan extolled the cheering crowd: “He’ll be back, and we’ll be back, next time bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and in November we send him home to Texas!”

Addressing the business conference, Bush admitted that Ohio had suffered horrible job losses and a stagnant economy, but blamed “terrorists.” The news coverages of the event all stated that they were “surprised,” “overwhelmed,” etc., by the large numbers of protesters. It was reported the following day that the Ohio Department of Transportation had suspended one worker, a city truck driver who was in charge of blocking off streets with his truck for placing a huge “Bush – Traitor” sign on his truck. He is expected to file a grievance on the suspension, since no official regulation prohibits signs on trucks.

The author can be reached at bruce@admiral.cc.

Jobs crisis looms big in 2004 elections

Fri, 19 Mar 2004 04:21:00 +0000

News Analysis

Every day over 85,000 workers across the nation lose their jobs, over 4,000 people file for personal bankruptcy, 43.6 million people have no health insurance, and 11 million children attend broken down schools. Yet on the campaign trail President George W. Bush says, “Today our economy is strong and it is getting stronger. Stock market wealth has risen by more than $3 trillion since the beginning of 2003.”

But what may be good for Wall Street and corporate profits isn’t necessarily good for the majority of Americans – working-class people and their families. Bush’s approval rating on the economy is low and dropping fast. Voters rank the economy, jobs, health care and education as the most important issues for the presidential election – far above national security and the “war on terrorism.” Even some on Wall Street worry that the combined effect of Bush’s war policy and widening economic hardship will create a “perfect storm” of opposition to the administration.

“It literally is a jobless recovery. There is no policy on how to generate jobs. Policy should make sure wealth accrues back to the people, not the corporations,” economist Julianne Malveaux told the World in a recent phone interview. Some 250,000 new jobs a month are needed to fulfill the rosy economic predictions of Bush’s economic report, but last month only 21,000 were created, she said. “The arithmetic is not there.”

The arithmetic “isn’t there” today and is unlikely to be there tomorrow. Constantly introducing labor-saving technology to drive up each worker’s productivity, corporations are shedding jobs and focusing exclusively on maximizing profits.

PepsiCo, the second largest soft-drink maker, invested heavily in computer equipment to become more “efficient,” according to Bloomberg News. “We are definitely in the mode of looking at efficiencies,” CEO Gary Rodkin said. Efficiency meant firing 750 workers and closing a plant in Kentucky last December.

Cisco Systems will only consider adding to its 34,000 employees when they hit a higher profit margin per employee, said a company spokesman. Right now revenue stands at $632,000 per employee. Their goal is to pass the $700,000 mark before hiring more workers.

So – if stoking corporate profits is not creating jobs, what policies can?

If business is not in business to create jobs, then the only alternative is to look to the public, government sector – to invest in the schools, parks, water pipes and bridges that make our society run and our lives better.

“Investment in the infrastructure not only creates jobs, but addresses the health and education of our nation and children. Investment in the military creates the least amount of jobs with the most amount of harm,” argues Malveaux.

The American Society of Civil Engineers recently called for a $1.6 trillion dollar investment to bring our schools, transportation, energy and water systems, roads and other parts of our nation’s infrastructure up to an “adequate” level.

The AFL-CIO has issued a nine-point program for job creation which includes investment in the infrastructure, raising the minimum wage, guaranteeing the right to organize, financial assistance to the states, and a jobs program that focuses on developing environmentally “smart” energy sources and producing affordable homes.

But even pro-people public policy will not automatically guarantee equity. Special steps will need to be taken to address chronically higher jobless rates among African Americans, for example.

“The racist disparities in jobless rates, health, life expectancies for Black and Brown people means you have to do some targeting by race to guarantee equal opportunity,” Malveaux says. “Without targeting for racial equality, good public policy does not necessarily trickle down to Black and Brown people.”

All of this points to the importance of building a big, inclusive coalition to defeat Bush and his pro-Wall Street policies as an important step on the road to jobs and equality for all.

Trent Bell, president of the Kansas City, Mo., Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, says CBTU, along with unions and community groups in Missouri, is mobilizing for the 2004 elections with these high stakes in mind.

“There is double-digit unemployment in the Black community and 50 percent of the teenagers are unemployed,” Bell told the World. “CBTU is getting involved with voter education and local school board elections, where budget cuts and the No Child Left Behind law are hot topics.”

Massive government investment in people, not corporations and the super-rich, is needed to create jobs and improve the quality of life for all.

Terrie Albano is editor of the People’s Weekly World and can be reached at talbano@pww.org.

The rural movement to oust Bush

Fri, 12 Mar 2004 06:14:00 +0000

There’s more than bridges in Madison County

WINTERSET, Iowa – With its fertile pastures, meandering streams and quaint covered bridges, Madison County, Iowa, has become a symbol of rural America. The handsome farms with overflowing corncribs could have been drawn straight out of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.”

The county seat, Winterset, with its Victorian courthouse on an immaculate town square, is unchanged from the 1920s. A couple of blocks away is the little white cottage where actor John Wayne was born. No wonder filmmakers came here to shoot “Bonnie & Clyde” and “The Bridges of Madison County.” The past is so perfectly preserved they didn’t have to build a single set. Amid all this pastoral beauty, it’s hard to imagine that this, too, is a battleground in the 2004 elections.

But here, as everywhere else in the nation, a movement is springing up like winter wheat to oust George W. Bush from the White House. This reporter spent a week here covering the Jan. 16 Iowa Democratic caucuses that drew 122,000 workers and farmers together at more than 1,000 schools, libraries and churches to choose delegates favoring Democratic presidential candidates.

The standing-room-only crowd in the St. Charles Public Library that night applauded when the chairman pointed out that it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. They also applauded speakers from every one of the Democratic candidacies, typical of the tolerant, live-and-let-live culture here.

“We all know we have to get Bush out of the White House. We just have to,” said Kelly Harlow, the youthful John Edwards coordinator for Madison County. The crowd erupted in stormy applause. Edwards captured the St. Charles caucus hands down, although Kerry won an upset victory statewide.

Don Monahan, a Dennis Kucinich supporter, touched off more applause when he declared, “Bush is about power, greed, and money. We need to stop that, all of us together.” (The day before, the Des Moines Register featured Kucinich’s four-page pull-out ad offering the strongest position of any candidate on the defense of family farms.)

Robert Bell, a farmer and the chair of the Madison County Democratic Party, said the turnout was the biggest he could remember – and the most enthusiastic.

“We’ve got a lot more people here tonight than the fire marshall would like,” he chuckled. “I’m a Gephardt supporter myself, but I think all these voters will unite behind the Democratic nominee next November, whoever it is.”

If that spirit is replicated elsewhere in the nation’s heartland, it bodes well for the struggle to remove Bush and Cheney from power. Because of the undemocratic Electoral College system, rural voters enjoy political clout out of proportion to their numbers. So it is essential that the anti-Bush movement work doubly hard to win these voters.

Farmer-labor unity

Iowa is a textbook of how to do it. Reflecting the diverse composition and the unity of the Iowa electorate, both family farmers and urban working class, Iowa went narrowly for Democrat Al Gore in 2000. Steelworkers employed at the Firestone plant in Des Moines made common cause with farmers in the Iowa caucuses. That farmer-labor alliance has always been the base for progressive change in Iowa, as in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and other farm-belt states.

Yet Bush carried a tier of rural states that sliced right down the middle of the country: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Independent farmers say Gore lost these states largely through his failure to come out fighting against corporate agribusiness and factory farming, and in support of the key demand of family farmers, fair farm commodity prices. Their anger is palpable about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has been a boon to agribusiness but a disaster for Iowa farmers and workers.

The night before this year’s caucuses, Gil and Inez Dawes, longtime residents of Madison County and both peace and justice workers for the United Methodist Church, took me to a meeting of “Farm Survival,” a group of family farmers who meet twice monthly at the Multipurpose Center in Winterset. They discussed resolutions they planned to introduce at the caucuses demanding that the Democrats come out stronger in defense of family farming.

“It still comes down to price,” said Betty Johnston, who with her husband Raymond operates a cattle and grain farm north of Winterset. “We are not getting paid what we should be paid for the crops we produce. It’s not fair. We are not on a level playing field.”

The price farmers receive after dawn-to-dark toil, she said, is below the cost of production. Independent and family farmers are kept barely afloat by federal subsidies, the lion’s share of which are reaped by agribusiness giants.

Fight for parity prices

“If the Harkin-Gephardt Bill had gone through, we’d have a lot different situation in farming than we have today,” Raymond Johnston said. “It would have cost taxpayers some money to begin with, but it would have saved money in the long run. Back in the days when we had parity prices, it made money for everybody.”

That bill, named for Iowa’s Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin and Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt, would be a step toward restoring parity prices, a system of price supports aimed at insuring farmers the cost of production and a modest profit.

“They used to say that a dollar earned from the sale of farm commodities turned over seven times,” Raymond said. Thus farm income rippled out through rural and urban communities generating jobs and income for millions of non-farm workers.

“Let agriculture flourish and the towns will prosper,” he added. “But if agriculture fails, grass will grow in the streets of our cities and towns. The big banks and corporations already control our energy supply, manufacturing, our money and interest. If they gain control of our food supply, they’ll have it all. Agriculture is the one industry that is still not totally under their control.”

Another resolution they planned to introduce demanded stronger enforcement of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts to curb the enormous factory farms that poison the countryside with millions of tons of hog and chicken manure. Right outside the idyllic Winterset is Rose Acres, an agribusiness poultry operation that befouls the air and water of the pristine county seat.

“When it rains, it really runs, Betty said. “It attracts rats and snakes. It’s a real mess.”

Critics point out that these factory farms are a breeding ground for scourges like mad cow disease and avian flu. The livestock are packed so closely together that they must be fed heavy doses of antibiotics to protect them from infection and to stimulate rapid weight gain. This practice is also a factor in the spread of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.

If it stinks, there’s a factory farm

“Within two-and-a-half miles of us there are five big manure containments. There are 22,000 sows on those five farms and another building with 500 boars,” Raymond said. “It generates many millions of gallons of manure. All the foul water flows south so eventually it will get down to the State House. Maybe then the stink will get the legislators’ attention.”

Everyone present at the Farm Survival meeting belonged to Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI), a multiracial urban and rural grassroots organization. Together with the National Family Farm Coalition and the Campaign for Family Farms, Iowa CCI engages in direct action to fight corporate domination and defend family farmers.

“These giant corporations don’t pay their taxes. But they enjoy all kinds of subsidies from the government,” sheep farmer Dean Emory told the meeting. “These factory farms are highly subsidized. An excess profits tax is needed.”

Agribusinesses defend their encroachment on the grounds that it creates jobs and provides cheap food. “But they don’t pay their workers a living wage. If they paid a living wage, more workers would take those jobs. The turnover wouldn’t be so high. We’re going back to feudal times, like the nobility and the serfs, the haves and have-nots,” Raymond Johnston said.

“When I heard Bush talking about going to Mars, I thought to myself, ‘It’s like the Tower of Babel.’ We should take one of those spacecraft and send him to Mars.”

NAFTA ruins family farmers

“Free trade” is sold as a boon for farmers north and south of the U.S.-Mexico border. But NAFTA has ruined farmers, Raymond said.

“A Mexican farmer spoke at the Iowa CCI convention. He was in tears, crying that cheap grain from the United States is driving him out of business. These big multinational corporations like Cargill and ADM are getting their raw material below the cost of production and it’s ruining workers and farmers on both sides of the border.”

“We all know we can’t win this fight alone,” Emory interjected. “Iowa CCI is everybody working together, keeping up to date, supporting one another, reaching out. This is one farmer that is not tied to the Farm Bureau.” He was referring to the U.S. Farm Bureau, an ultra-right outfit that supports Bush and the Republicans down the line.

Iowa CCI, founded in 1981, has 2,000 members in 93 of Iowa’s 99 counties. It charges that the 2002 Farm Bill signed by George W. Bush enforces the system of low farm prices, requiring “billions of dollars in federal payments to prevent a total collapse of the farm economy.”

The bill also encourages aggressive fencerow-to-fencerow farming and the expansion of factory farms and feedlot livestock production that contaminates ground and surface water,” a policy statement from Iowa CCI declares.

“Low farm prices have not resulted in low food prices, but instead, higher profit margins for a handful of multinational food processors and exporters,” the statement continues. “Iowa CCI members are calling on Congress and the President to take an international leadership role in establishing a sustainable family farm policy …”

It would include raising commodity loan rates to ensure that farm income comes from fair prices in the marketplace rather than taxpayers. It calls for short-term conservation measures to avoid overproduction; land stewardship grants to enable young people to go into farming; and a farmer-owned grain reserve to ensure food security and stable prices. This basic farm policy statement is available on the group’s website (www.iowacci.org).

Crisis leaves kids behind

The struggle in rural America touches on every basic issue from world peace to the environment and education. Sherry Williams, a counselor at the public school in Pocahontas, Iowa, was at Dean headquarters a day or so before the caucuses.

Amid the hubbub, she told this reporter, “Family farmers are under pressure. It’s almost impossible to start a new farm. The large corporate farms get the bulk of federal subsidies and that makes it harder for family farmers to compete. Many are leaving their farms.”

She added, “We have declining enrollment all across rural America. Bush’s ‘No Child Left Behind’ is a real pain in the neck for us. In our small schools, we have to multitask to meet the budget crunch. I’m the school counselor but I’m also the curriculum director. I counsel K through 12.”

But No Child Left Behind requires teachers to be certified in every area they teach, an impossibility in rural schools. “No Child Left Behind sets all public schools up for failure,” Williams charged.

“When you expect 100 percent performance, that is perfectionism and it’s not going to happen. All children can learn but not at the same rate. No Child Left Behind does not allow for that. It takes away more local control than anybody can figure out.”

She was expecting a heavier than normal turnout at her caucus and that the sentiment would be “any of the Democrats is better than Bush.” It will take pressure from the grassroots to convince the presumptive Democratic nominee, John Kerry, to embrace a program to address the crisis in rural America. He voted for NAFTA.

But standing in front of AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington recently, Kerry blasted “Benedict Arnold corporate CEOs” who use off-shore tax shelters to hide their profits, while exporting jobs to lands of cheap labor. For millions of rural Americans, it was music to their ears. This is a voting bloc that can be won to the “anybody but Bush” cause.

The author can be reached at greenerpastures 21212@yahoo.com.

Women need unions on job

Fri, 12 Mar 2004 05:44:00 +0000

Interview with Utility Workers Local 132 President Marti Rodriguez-Harris

LOS ANGELES – Verbal abuse, sexual harassment and unequal treatment were the issues that drove Marti Rodriguez-Harris to the union movement.

“It was 1978 and I was working in accounts payable at Broadway Department stores. The bosses would take the young girls to a nearby motel as a condition to getting a raise. We had no union. I was doing the work of three supervisors,” Harris told the World in a recent phone interview.

“I went to the personnel manager and spilled my guts. Later I was called into the office of the general manager – just me with a bunch of supervisors – and they used all sorts of four letter words. It was the scariest time of my life.”

Harris went looking for a lawyer – and justice. She learned some basic labor law along the way. For one thing, she discovered you don’t get unemployment compensation when you quit a job. She also found out that sexual harassment was not illegal, unless you belonged to a union. That was the first time she heard the word “union.”

“I didn’t know what a union was. The person at the Labor Department told me to go to the library to find out more,” Harris said. And she did.

She got her first union job in 1979 with Southern California Gas Co. Some 25 years later, Harris became the first woman president of the 3,900-member Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA) Local 132. She is also one of two women on the union’s 23-member national executive board and a vice-president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women.

In a 2001 UWUA survey on working women and deregulation, Harris told the story of a mom who got a call from her child’s school while she was at work. A customer call center employee, a single mom, got a call from the school telling her to pick up her sick child, Harris said. The women’s supervisor refused to let her leave because the center was “understaffed.”

“Luckily this woman had the UWUA behind her. I called the supervisor and was very clear: The problems of an understaffed unit – a direct result of how companies run their businesses under deregulation – are of management’s making. The employee – and her child – shouldn’t be penalized just because you haven’t staffed your unit appropriately,” Harris said.

The union won that battle and one against deregulation of the natural gas industry. “We had no choice except to fight, Harris said, deregulation destroys jobs and customer service.”

Local 132 is going into contract negotiations with Southern California Gas this year. “Part-timers have mushroomed from 36 to 1,500; they have no health care and no benefits. It’s a negative trend for workers. We want to expose this injustice.”

Harris said the long-term, full-time workers have to work 35 years before they are eligible for full pension. She’d like to win a lower threshold – 30 years at least – in this year’s contract negotiations.

“We are starting early in working with the membership about the contract,” Harris said. “Our members are spread out all over the state, so I want to be out with the workers talking to them. We are having a series of membership meetings, too, so we can bring all the members together.”

Women’s History Month celebrates achievements by women. Women’s leadership in the trade union movement and for workers’ rights is an important part of that. Harris lives a slogan that can improve conditions for all women workers: “A woman’s place is in her union.”

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

Coalition opposes Border Patrol raid

Fri, 12 Mar 2004 05:18:00 +0000

PORTLAND, Maine – Reyna A. Marroquin Solorzano, 22, was working in a laundry here to support her parents and seven siblings in Guatemala. She was injured in a fall while trying to escape a fire in her third-floor apartment and died the next day, Jan. 16.

In its coverage of the story, a local newspaper identified Solorzano as having been “in the country illegally.” Whether by coincidence or not, on Jan. 29 armed U.S. Border Patrol agents raided Portland’s minority, low-income and homeless communities, terrorizing citizens and non-citizens alike in an anti-immigrant “sweep.”

For over a week after the raids, many immigrants were afraid to leave their homes to shop for food, to send their children to school, to go to work, or to seek medical help, according to the Many and One Coalition, an immigrant rights group headquartered in Lewiston, about 45 minutes away.

In a recent letter to Rep. Tom Allen (D-Maine), the Many and One Coalition wrote, “The unacceptable behavior of the U.S. Border Patrol is no less distressing than the Gestapo’s behavior during the Holocaust, when any citizen of a Nazi-occupied European country could be stopped on the street and asked for papers, and arrested if they did not have any.”

On Feb. 2 over 250 people marched in the snow up Congress Street here, partially reenacting the route taken by the Border Patrol. They stopped at the Somali-owned Halal Meat Market and the Dominican-owned La Bodega Latina store, both targets of the raid. They rallied at Monument Square and heard 20 speakers, including the mayor of Portland and the attorney general of Maine.

Beth Stickney, an attorney with the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, said the behavior of the Border Patrol may be new to Portland, but it is not new to the immigrants who work in Maine’s blueberry and potato fields or in the fishing industries along the coast. Many workers are regularly profiled for arrest by the Border Patrol because of the color of their skin.

Stickney urged vigilance about pending anti-immigrant legislation, including H. Res. 3722, the Undocumented Alien Emergency Medical Amendments of 2004, which would require emergency room staff to fingerprint or photograph any undocumented worker they treat and to report him or her to the Department of Homeland Security for deportation.

She also warned about the Clear Law Enforcement for Criminal Alien Removal (CLEAR) Act, H.R. 2671 (S. 1906), which would require state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws, but shield them from any accountability for civil rights violations.

The Portland coalition includes El Centro Latino, the Civil Liberties Union, the Maine Council of Churches, the Rural Workers Coalition, the NAACP, Peace Action, the Portland Tenants Union, Veterans for Peace, the American Muslim Society, and the Islamic Society of Portland, among others.

The author can be reached at wells@peaceactionme.org.

Grocery union leader assesses strike

Fri, 12 Mar 2004 05:05:00 +0000

BAL HARBOR, Fla. – As a result of the hard-fought Southern California grocery strike, the union now has tens of thousands of political activists, said Joe Hansen, the newly-elected international president of the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

With obvious pride, Hansen related his picket line conversations during the five-month strike/lockout that was settled March 2. The new activists are “politically astute, aware of the national political situation and issues like health care,” said the former journeyman meat cutter from Milwaukee. Hansen, the union’s secretary-treasurer since 1997, was elected unanimously to replace retiring president Doug Dority.

In a wide-ranging discussion with reporters at the AFL-CIO winter Executive Board meeting on March 9, Hansen took strong exception to any characterization of the strike settlement as a defeat.

“We can’t hide two tiers,” he conceded. “It’s something we have to fix.” But management’s demand to segregate the health care and pension funds of new employees from those of the current work force and to make no contribution on behalf of the new workers was defeated. Under those conditions, “it could never have been fixed,” he stated. But with a unitary fund, even with unequal benefits, “we are in a helluva better bargaining position when it comes to the next negotiations.”

Currently employed workers will not have to pay health care premiums for the first two years and then will pay a maximum of $260 a year for individuals and $780 for family coverage. Health care for new workers will be more limited, and their pay raises will come at a slower rate. A lump sum payment averaging $500 will be paid in the first and third year of the three-year contract.

Hansen promised a fight in upcoming retail contract negotiations in Northern California, Washington D.C./Baltimore and Chicago. The UFCW is not accepting the Southern California settlement as a pattern. “If we get the same demands from Safeway, we will get more strikes like in Southern California,” he vowed.

The 1.4-million-member union could take such strikes financially, Hansen insisted. It is already building up its strike fund again, and is prepared to borrow against other funds. In the future, Hansen said, the union would not hold back on immediately launching a national boycott of Safeway. “If it is a Safeway problem, it will be a Safeway problem across the U.S.” He expressed confidence in being able to overcome objections any locals might have to supporting such a move.

“The consumers in Southern California understood the issues,” Hansen said. Seventy percent of consumers respected the picket lines, he said, resulting in a loss of $2.5 billion in sales for the grocery chains.

The new president says he has a long to-do list. He thinks it is urgent to bring forward leadership in the union that reflects the diversity of its membership, especially the immigrant work force. “Solidarity among all workers – regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or immigration status – is our strength to meet the challenges of the future,” he said.

Hansen cited the need to build global solidarity to confront corporate globalization. And he would love to get industry-wide bargaining or at least common expiration dates. “Right now we’re working on moving our contract expiration dates closer together,” he said.

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

AFL-CIO president: Bush AWOL on jobs crisis

Fri, 12 Mar 2004 03:43:00 +0000

BAL HARBOR, Fla. – “The jobs crisis has become a national disaster,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. And during this crisis, “George Bush has been AWOL,” he added.

Sweeney spoke at the federation’s annual winter conference here March 9. “Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao will not be attending,” he told reporters. “If this administration had a secretary of labor, we would have invited him or her,” he said sarcastically, “but instead we have two secretaries of commerce.” Chao is notoriously anti-labor.

About 400,000 American workers were able to join or form unions last year, Sweeney reported. But with 2.3 million manufacturing jobs lost, union membership has not kept up and “our hard challenge has been made harder.”

Nevertheless, the labor movement is unified and determined to defeat George Bush.

“Workers have held the line on employers’ efforts to shift rising health care costs to workers recently” at GE, in hotel negotiations, in auto, steel, rubber and for some part-time workers like janitors, said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka. He confirmed that health care remains at the top of the labor movement’s bargaining agenda. Trumka lauded the grocery workers of Southern California as heroes in this struggle.

According to Trumka, the health care crisis cannot be solved at the bargaining table: “The solution must be national and legislative.”

Trumka also reported on a lawsuit the federation is launching against the city of Miami for the “unprecedented violence and repression” anti-FTAA demonstrators encountered in that city’s streets here last November.

Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson introduced Working America, a new organization for working people that will take in workers who don’t have the benefit of a union on the job. “Working people in America are hungry for ways to have their voices heard,” she said. Canvassers for Working America go door-to-door in working-class communities to inform and mobilize. They generate petitions and letters on issues such as jobs and health care. The new organization has already garnered 100,000 members, said Chavez-Thompson.

This year, the first day of the Executive Board meeting coincided with International Women’s Day. Unwilling to let the occasion pass unmarked, the vivacious executive VP organized an informal gathering of the growing cadre of women labor activists in evidence at this meeting – from fellow Executive Board members and heads of state federations to support staff and secretaries. Labor veterans accustomed to limited female participation were warmed by the size of the remarkably diverse group, which spanned several generations, that gathered in Chavez-Thompson’s hotel suite. Some union sisters kicked off their shoes, others sat on the floor. All raised a glass in a toast to each other, sisters around the world and the struggles ahead. A tradition was born.

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

click here for Spanish text

Confronting grief with prayer and struggle

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 06:49:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. – Lee Hamilton wears two buttons. Standing like many other working-class guys, with hands in his jeans’ pockets, sporting a sweatshirt and baseball cap emblazoned with “Meat Cutters Union,” he wore one small United Food and Commercial Workers union button, and a big one of a handsome, blonde-haired boy.

“Tell me about the button,” I said, walking up to him.

“This is my son, Colin. He would have been 18 years old last November. He committed suicide,” Hamilton told me. “I wear his picture over my heart.”

Hamilton tells his moving story to everyone – from the picket lines to rallies. Hamilton and his wife, Veronica, are two of the 70,000 grocery workers forced out on strike or locked out of their jobs on Oct. 11, 2003, by the corporate food chain giants Safeway, Albertsons and Kroger. Hamilton has 22 years as a meat cutter at Ralphs, which is Kroger-operated.

After his son’s suicide in September 2003, Hamilton had taken time off work. He was set to return on his 50th birthday – Oct. 11 – the day Ralphs locked out the union workers.

“Without strength and prayer I couldn’t have gotten through all of this,” Hamilton said. “I guess I was meant to bear this pain.”

Hamilton then tells about meeting a woman on the picket line. “One day I was on the picket line and a woman came up to me and said, ‘Tell me about your button.’ I told her and she immediately burst out into uncontrollable tears. I knew something more was going on so I asked her what was wrong.”

She said she had been planning to kill herself that day, but God or something told her to come over and ask me about the pin. “I just told her she has to bear the pain, because suicide is not an option. There is no greater pain for your loved ones,” he said. “She told me I saved her life.” He pulled out a silver and turquoise ring this woman had given him, telling him to give it to his oldest son.

During any labor battle, workers go on a roller coaster ride of emotions, from having to deal with economic and health care hardships to harassment by the bosses and the insecurity of being forced off your job. But the pain of going through such a struggle with the crushing grief of losing a child is immeasurable.

“I’ve always tried to teach my kids to stand up and fight for what you believe is right. My son Colin is with me. My other two sons, 17 and 11, are also with me,” he said. “After 22 years, I refuse to let [Safeway CEO] Steve Burd or any CEO take my pension or health benefits.”

Speaking about his family’s tragedy at union and community events over the last five months has been, in some ways, therapeutic, Hamilton said. His grief counseling was abruptly halted when the bosses cut off his family’s health care in December. The family was forced to combine dealing with their pain, fighting for their union and protecting the family’s economic well-being. He found empathy and support with his fellow union brothers and sisters, and in the great big working-class family of humankind.

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

UNITE and HERE unions announce merger

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 05:14:00 +0000

The strength of two newly-combined unions may be put to the test even before the merger process is completed, as hotel workers in nine of Los Angeles’ largest hotels face expiration of their contracts in mid-April. Employers could be seeking cuts in health care benefits.

UNITE HERE will be the name of the new union that comes out of the merger of two of the nation’s most aggressive and activist labor organizations.

The executive boards of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union and UNITE, the clothing, textile, and laundry union, voted unanimously Feb. 26 to merge the two organizations. The tentative agreement is expected to be ratified with a vote of rank-and-file members at a special joint convention in Chicago in July.

“You need to have strong unions that are capable of fighting the coming battles between workers and employers wanting to lower their living standards,” said UNITE’s president, Bruce Raynor. Raynor is known for his leadership of the 17-year-long JP Stevens campaign, which organized textile workers in the South. He will serve as the newly-formed union’s general president.

The new union will have the strength it needs to bargain with giant global corporations, said John Wilhelm, HERE president. Wilhelm will be UNITE HERE’s president/hospitality industries. The two men will share executive, budgetary and personnel authority, according to a joint press release.

HERE spearheaded last fall’s Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, which brought together hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters in support of a path to citizenship for America’s millions of immigrant workers. The majority of HERE’s members are immigrants, including Latinos and Asians. UNITE describes its membership as “ethnically diverse, with high percentages of African American and Latino and Asian immigrants.” Women make up the majority in both unions.

The merger represents a “nontraditional merger of two nontraditional unions,” said Wilhelm. Although there is some overlap in industries covered, particularly hospitality and laundry, the merger is presented as primarily a reflection of the two unions’ shared priorities – social justice and a commitment to organizing.

UNITE HERE, with a total membership of 440,000, will be headquartered in New York City.

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

Grad students GET-UP and strike for justice

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 05:06:00 +0000

PHILADELPHIA – Hundreds of University of Pennsylvania graduate student employees held a two-day strike Feb. 26-27 to protest the university administration’s refusal to recognize their right to join a union.

One year ago, the National Labor Relations Board conducted a representation election. The school’s 3,600 doctoral students cast ballots to decide if GET-UP (Graduate Employees Together – University of Pennsylvania, affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers) would represent them. But the university filed an appeal with the NLRB and the ballots were sealed, not counted.

GET-UP is asking Penn’s Board of Trustees to drop its appeal and accept whatever choice graduate student employees made in February 2003. The Board of Trustees refuses. The National Labor Relations Board says it will decide on the appeal within the year.

During the strike, GET-UP asked faculty members to continue to do their work but not to do the graduate employees’ jobs. Some undergraduate students showed their support by carrying signs on the picket line. Picketers reported that although many undergraduate students did not at first understand the issue, they were educated by the strike. GET-UP has over 1,000 members at the university and 83 percent voted for the strike. The university warned of possible pay loss and disciplinary action.

“GET-UP, a four-year campaign for union representation, is about having a voice in our working conditions, salary and health care benefits,” said Dillon Brown, a graduate student in English who is a member of GET-UP.

Graduate student employees teach classes, assist professors in the classroom and laboratories and do research. Most are working on their doctoral degree. The salary, called a stipend, averages $12,000 - $15,000 a year depending on the department in which the student is employed. These graduate students are older and many are married with families.

“They need adequate, affordable, comprehensive health care benefits,” said Brown. He added, “The Student Health Center does not meet our needs.”

GET-UP says the University of Pennsylvania has an endowment of over $3 billion, is spending millions buying property in Philadelphia and can afford to treat its graduate student employees fairly. Yale, Columbia, Boston University and Temple University are a few of the universities where graduate student employees are unionized.

GET-UP is supporting the Employee Free Choice Act, being sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) The Act would guarantee all workers, including graduate student employees, the right to join a union through a “card check procedure,” eliminating employer delays such as these workers are experiencing.

The author can be reached at phillyrose1@earthlink.net.

Teachers stick with union, scorn Paige attack

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 04:53:00 +0000

Workers’ Correspondence

While Secretary of Education Rod Paige’s recent statement that the National Education Association is a “terrorist organization” is disturbing enough in itself, his apology issued later that same day is even more alarming.

Secretary Paige’s apology attempts to drive a wedge between NEA members and their lobbyists and leadership in Washington. He said, “[O]ur nation’s teachers … are the real soldiers of democracy, whereas the NEA’s high-priced Washington lobbyists have made no secret that they will fight against bringing real, rock-solid improvements in the way we educate all our children regardless of skin color, accent or where they live.”

Apparently Paige is unaware that those lobbyists in Washington are there with the blessing and support of the NEA membership, representing the collective will of that membership. Those same “real, rock-solid improvements” in education that the lobbyists are fighting are the provisions of the Bush administration’s education law, the No Child Left Behind Act, which NEA members oppose. The lobbyists are merely the membership’s voice on Capitol Hill.

But if Secretary Paige were to acknowledge that, he would be forced to acknowledge that the nation’s teachers, the people actually responsible for educating our children day-in and day-out, have found flaws in the law that he promotes so vigorously. Better to try to divide those members from their leadership and conquer the NEA, one of the largest unions in the country and one that frequently supports Democratic candidates.

Perhaps Reg Weaver, the president of the NEA, said it best when he commented on the alleged difference between the NEA’s members and its leadership. “We are the teachers. There is no distinction.”

– Debra Brim, public education activist in Tucson, Ariz. She can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Alabama workers defeat union busters again

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 04:50:00 +0000

Union members at Imerys in Sylacauga, Ala., reaffirmed their commitment to each other and their union, Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Union (PACE), Jan. 21 when they defeated a management-orchestrated decertification campaign by a vote of 233-108.

This is the second time in four years that these workers have turned back an anti-union campaign with the help of international solidarity, according to a report from the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM).

Imerys is a French-based producer of building and construction materials. PACE and ICEM took Imerys on in 1999 and 2000 when the firm purchased a nonunion plant adjacent to its PACE-represented one in Sylacauga. The company then claimed the combined workforce no longer wanted union representation and orchestrated a decertification campaign, allowing the National Labor Relations Board to conduct a “yes” or “no” vote for the union.

PACE and ICEM brought the dispute before Imerys workers in France, Belgium, Australia and U.K. Prior to the vote, ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs visited Sylacauga and pledged to “make it so hot” for Imerys that it would want a “solution.” The global pressure forced management to let up the pressure on the workers, who then overwhelmingly voted for PACE. A three-year labor agreement was negotiated.

As the contract expired early this year, the second management-inspired decertification vote was held. Despite a bombardment of blatant anti-union materials and rhetoric at home and at work, the workers and their union prevailed.

The ICEM vows that, along with its affiliates throughout the company’s global operations, it will be closely following future developments in Sylacauga.

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

Sleep- deprived women

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 04:32:00 +0000

A woman’s right to a good night’s sleep, some quiet time alone, regular vacations – these are among our goals, along with men’s right to the same, and good jobs, social equality, and security for all.

“Wal-Martization” is another word for capitalist globalization. It has brought tens of millions of workers worldwide the sleep deprivation that comes with unnecessary night work, the overcrowding that accompanies great poverty and insecurity, seven-day workweeks, no vacations, and massive overtime that often is never even paid. Women, with the burden of responsibility for children and often the worst-paid jobs, have suffered some of globalization’s greatest blows.

A recent report by Oxfam, based on a 12-country survey, carefully documents these results of capitalist globalization (“free trade”). “Trading Away Our Rights” focuses on women workers, and portrays the terrible parallels in global factory conditions from Bangladesh to Morocco, Sri Lanka to the U.S., and from the garment industry to flower fields.

“We have a very young workforce of women,” says a garment factory manager cited in the report. His factory in Morocco produces for Spain’s “Wal-Mart,” El Corte Ingles. “We prefer hiring women because they are more disciplined,” he continues. “At times, the women have to stay up working all night and they understand perfectly the need for that flexibility.”

“There are people working day, night, day, night, without sleeping, because they are told, ‘You are not meeting the target, and the shipment is near,’” says a sewing machine operator for a contractor in Kenya producing for Wal-Mart.

“I used to send workers to the hospital every week – they were suffering sheer exhaustion, fainting, losing their minds,” says a former subcontractor in Thailand. “When my child was sick,” reports a Cambodian garment worker, “I had to leave her for work, because if you didn’t do overtime, they would dismiss you – it didn’t matter whether it was day or night.”

“Once, we started at 10 in the morning and finished at 6 in the morning the next day,” a woman contracted to pick grapes for Dole in Chile reports. “Since there is no transportation, you cannot say, ‘This is it, I’m going home.’”

Closer to home, “In the past six years, there have been five federal prosecutions for slavery in Florida’s agricultural sector.”

The facts in the Oxfam report are powerful. Yet its conclusions are weak and ineffective. It calls on Wal-Mart, Target, Nike and others at the top of the chain “to make respect for labor rights integral to their supply-chain business strategies.” The meat of the report portrays profound hostility to workers.

Similarly, the report calls on “the IMF and the World Bank to promote workers’ rights throughout their operations.” Yet the report recounts how “the IMF and the World Bank throughout the 1980s and 1990s recommended and required, through loan conditionality, that governments make their labor laws more ‘flexible.’” Both the IMF and World Bank “pushed policies to increase the use of temporary contracts, reduce maternity and social security benefits, extend overtime, and cut minimum wages” in countries across the globe.

In stark contrast, the right to union organization and collective bargaining was left aside. In 1999, James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, said that the institution did not support these rights, because it ‘did not get involved in national politics.’” The IMF and World Bank serve Wall Street, which also controls Wal-Mart, Nike & Co.

The report does not address debts to Wall Street, even though debt lies behind governments’ documented collusion with local employers to weaken and cheapen labor.

Oxfam’s report (maketradefair.com) is worth reading. The conditions it portrays are social and political explosions certain to happen. For those explosions to be productively channeled requires strong unions and international political working class unity. Women’s participation at every level is essential – and mighty. That points the way to assuring the right to quiet time, and a good night’s sleep for all.

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

Grocery workers set example of courage

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 04:24:00 +0000

News analysis

The five-month grocery strike in Southern California is over and the members have overwhelmingly ratified their new contract. Oddly enough, a quote from the Communist Manifesto comes to mind: “Now and then, the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers.”

Were these 70,000 grocery workers victorious? Under the circumstances, they were. Why? Because they saved their union and live to fight another day.

And as Marx and Engels further made clear in the Manifesto, unions most often are forced to fight rearguard, defensive actions against the overwhelming power and money of the corporate rulers.

These are tough times for a strike after an unrelenting 20-year corporate union-busting offensive started by former President Ronald Reagan and given a great boost by George W. Bush and the ultra-right Republicans in Congress. Safeway and the others were out to destroy the union – pure and simple. With their boy in the White House they were sure now was the time to bring the union down.

Yet the heroism and courage of the grocery workers’ picket lines, demonstrations, community outreach and fightback in the face of severe financial hardship and punishing sacrifice was incredible. They set an example of courage for all trade unionists and working people. They not only saved their union, they made us all stronger.

Even more, they put a sharp point on health care issues for all working families in this important election year. As their union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, pointed out, their fight is yet more proof that there is no real solution to the health care crisis in this country short of a comprehensive, affordable, public health care system for all.

Their greatest victory is that “ever-expanding union of workers.” Safeway and the other food giants lost billions in sales because trade unionists and customers sided with the workers. Thousands around the country responded with shoe leather and money to support the strikers. Union locals, community organizations, churches, and elected officials rallied to the strikers, and to their health care issues.

Are the grocery workers going to be hurt by this contract? Yes. We all are. The companies got their foot in the door with a two-tier health care package for new hires. Health care is a major bargaining issue in every new contract these days. Now the pressure will intensify on upcoming contract negotiations.

There is no local-by-local, industry-by-industry solution to this crisis. Only a national system, as proposed by Michigan Congressman John Conyers in the United States National Health Insurance Act, HR 676, will work.

Lastly, this heroic struggle also points to the need for labor activists to think anew about some old, industrial-union-type ideas we need to update. Why are there so many regional, fragmented contracts in the food retail industry? Wouldn’t the grocery workers be immeasurably stronger with one national master contract with a common expiration date? Safeway, Kroger and Albertsons sure got together for this one. Can grocery workers do any less?

Scott Marshall is chair of the Communist Party’s Labor Commission. He can be reached at scott@rednet.org.

Guatemalans hail Cuban medical workers

Thu, 04 Mar 2004 11:36:00 +0000

Alfonso Portillo, Guatemala’s last president, is hardly a political ally of Fidel Castro’s, but that didn’t stop him heaping praise on Cuba’s doctors in his farewell speech in mid-January.

“As my last state duty, I didn’t want to miss out on presenting our highest order of state (the Order of the Quetzal) to the heroic brigade of Cuban doctors who, often enough, risked their lives in order to save those of Guatemalans.

“The doctors, nurses and health-care assistants have done everything imaginable during their stay here. They were doctors, mechanics, patient transporters and repairers of kitchen equipment. They have survived threats, misunderstandings, being ignored and loneliness.”

Portillo continued, “But they stayed and put into practice what friendship between peoples really means and demonstrated Cuba’s international solidarity.”

When Hurricane Mitch struck Central America in 1998, Guatemala and Honduras asked Havana for help. Within 72 hours, the first Cuban doctors arrived.

They were asked at the airport where they wanted to go. The hosts were relieved when they received the reply that they had secretly hoped to hear – the place where the need is greatest. That meant into the jungle, the mountains, the humidity and the heat. There was no electricity, no teachers, no means of transport apart from on foot, by donkey or canoe.

To people who, if they are lucky, live to 35 or 40 years of age, their misery compounded by Hurricane Mitch, this support was a godsend.

Their huts had been ripped away in the floods, along with paths and roads and their maize and beans. Mud reached up to people’s waists, corpses and animal cadavers lay around unburied, pestilence, mosquitoes and sickness were rampant. Academically-trained doctors had never been seen before in these areas.

One thousand seven hundred Cubans, male and female, have worked among these people since then, tending their needs. According to Guatemalan sources, in this time, they have managed to bring childhood death rates down from 40.2 per thousand to 13.8 per thousand live births, and they have saved 157,226 lives.

At present, 44,000 Cuban development aid workers are active in 83 countries. This figure doesn’t include the literacy workers numbering several thousand who have been active as far away as Maori communities in New Zealand.

German Padgett was the Honduran minister of culture until 2002. In an interview with the Mexican press agency NOTIMEX, he related his experience. “The Cubans are excellent professionals who provide loving care to their patients and their professional ethics come first, before anything else, unlike their Honduran colleagues, who put money first.”

“How is it possible,” he asked, “that a people that has been under a continuous blockade and has had to defend itself against continuous aggression has not lost its feelings for solidarity and care?”

– This article originally appeared in Neues Deutschland and was translated by John Green for Morning Star (U.K.).