People Before Profit blog

1911 fire shows perils of no regulation

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 07:05:00 +0000

It has become fashionable in certain circles to say that unions and government regulations are unnecessary nuisances, sand in the gears of the economy. The invisible hand of capitalism would take care of all our problems, if we would just let it alone.

It’s a free country, and the talking heads on Fox News have a right to say whatever they like. But this week, if they have any sense of decency, they should be silent. For March 25 was the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

Sept. 11, 2001, was not the first time that New Yorkers watched in horror as people jumped to certain death to avoid a more terrible death by fire. On March 25, 1911, dozens of workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory made the same grim choice. They were blouse-makers (“shirtwaist” was an early term for “blouse”) — mostly women, mostly recent immigrants. They worked six days a week for as little as $7 a week. They worked in a crowded tinderbox of flammable material. And 146 of them died that day.

They died because there was no sprinkler system. They died because the flimsy fire escape quickly collapsed. They died because only some of them were able to make it through the single open door before it was blocked by fire — and the other door, which could have led to safety, had been locked by the owners. The owners said that they had lost perhaps $25(!) worth of company property to employee theft, so they needed to watch all the employees leave through a single door.

There was a law against locking employees in — but it wasn’t enforced. They had a union — but no law required the employers to recognize and negotiate with that union on issues such as wages, hours and safety.

But the Triangle tragedy shocked the conscience of New York and of the nation. And as David Van Drehle writes in his excellent book, “Triangle: The Fire that Changed America,” New York’s corrupt Tammany Hall political machine decided that there had to be some response to the public outrage. The New York Legislature passed laws requiring fireproof stairways, functional fire escapes, open doors that swing outward, sprinkler systems and fire drills. And, having been forced to face the conditions in which factory workers labored, they went beyond safety to pass a bill limiting the workweek to 54 hours.

Years later, politicians who served in that same New York Legislature expanded on those ideas at the national level. Robert Wagner, as a U.S. senator, passed the Wagner Act, requiring employers to recognize unions. Franklin Delano Roosevelt — whose labor secretary, Frances Perkins, had witnessed the Triangle fire — passed minimum wage and maximum-hour legislation.

We take all of these things — safety laws, labor laws — for granted today. But they were not given us by the invisible hand. They were the product of hard work and much suffering.

So the next time you hear someone question the value of unions, or government regulations, tell them they’re stuck in a “pre-3/25 mentality.” When they give you a puzzled look, tell them what happened on 3/25.

Tom Chamberlain (tomchamberlain@unions-america.com) is a retired firefighter and president of the Oregon AFL-CIO. This article originally appeared in the Salem, Ore., Statesman Journal and is reprinted by permission of the author.

Colombia: repression and resistance

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 06:06:00 +0000

In response to a comment about the beauty of Colombia, 7-year-old Daniela said, “Yes, but it is so violent.” Daniela should know. She has seen the violence up close. Her father, a left-wing city council member, was murdered by right-wing paramilitaries when he answered the door to their home one day.

Unfortunately, violence is a way of life in Colombian politics and social life. Not in the sense that the different political forces vie for influence by violence, but that all progressive movements, including labor unions, are targets for right-wing paramilitary forces organized and supported by the wealthy oligarchy and the transnational corporations they are allied with.

Even though many say that the paramilitaries were organized to combat left-wing guerrilla forces active in Colombia, “the paramilitaries were born before the guerilla” movements, said Ivan Cepeda, director of the Manuel Cepeda Vargas Foundation. Cepeda met with our U.S.-Cuba Labor Exchange delegation during our visit to Bogotá in January. He said the paramilitaries trace their origins back to the “war against the native people” under Spanish colonialism and the theft of the country’s natural resources.

Some recent history

Cepeda’s organization is named for his father, a union organizer and the last elected senator of the Patriotic Union, a political organization formed in 1985 by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s biggest guerilla movement, and other left-wing organizations, including the Colombian Communist Party.

The Patriotic Union emerged as a legal opposition party as a result of a pact with the government of then-President Belisario Betancourt. The pact provided for the FARC to demobilize its army and enter the peaceful political life of the country.

In the 1986 elections, the Patriotic Union won the biggest vote the left had ever received in Colombia, winning over 400 positions from city hall to Parliament. Two years later, together with other left groupings, they won over 500 positions, and were poised to directly challenge the longstanding political monopoly held by the Liberal and Conservative parties.

Brutal turn of events

Nevertheless, this entry into the “peaceful political life” of the country was anything but peaceful. From 1985 to 1988, at least 500 leaders, candidates and other members of the Patriotic Union were assassinated by paramilitary and government forces acting in concert with the drug cartels. The killings mushroomed during election campaigns.

Cepeda said the paramilitaries used (and still use) two methods to terrorize the people’s movements. One is to kill its leaders, the other, to “remove the movements’ social base.” He said paramilitary forces would often enter a town that voted for the Patriotic Union or other left forces, gather up the people, and select “40 to 60 people whom they would torture or rape.”

“The rest they would kill,” he said. “It sent a message: ‘This could happen to you.’ People would leave the area.”

By 2002, Cepeda said, some 4,500 members of the Patriotic Union had been murdered, including two of its presidential candidates. His father was killed in 1995. “Three generations of political leaders were destroyed,” he said. The Patriotic Union went from 1,250 branches to almost none, he said. “It was so commonplace to kill Patriotic Union members that it was no longer reported in the news.”

As a consequence, the FARC declared that it had no choice but to return to the armed struggle.

Many family members of assassinated Patriotic Union members are fighting to have political killings of this type declared a form of genocide. “If this was to happen to any religious, ethnic or nationality it would be called genocide,” Cepeda said. Many have had to flee into exile.

The killing of Patriotic Union activists also created conditions in which the victims’ survivors have been stigmatized, said Cepeda. For example, he said, “they are denied credit or insurance.”

No let-up in repression

Today political violence and political murders against the left continue. Last year, when the left was discussing how to participate in the electoral process, a delegate to the congress of the Colombian Communist Party was slain. Since the congress, another 50 members have been killed, said a party activist.

Recently elected Sen. Gloria Inés Ramírez, a former president of the teachers union and currently a member of the leadership of the national trade union federation, the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), reported that in just one month’s time, three of her campaign workers were murdered. Ramírez said the killings were attempts to stop her campaign. She ran on the united left Polo Democrático Alternativo (PDA) ticket.

Wilson Borja, former head of the main public sector union who won re-election to the House of Representatives on the PDA ticket, was attacked when he was first running for the House in 2001. One of his bodyguards was killed and Borja was badly injured, almost losing one of his legs.

Labor a special target

But one does not have to be running for office to be a target of the paramilitaries, who have close connections with the armed forces. There have been at least 4,000 labor leaders and activists killed since the mid-1980s just for trying to organize a union. It is not uncommon for progressives and trade union leaders to travel in armored cars.

The United Steelworkers and other unions have sent solidarity delegations to Colombia to show their support for the embattled workers there.

Leaders of the National Union of Food Industry Workers (Sinaltrainal) say that owners of Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia routinely use paramilitaries to kill union leaders to stop them from organizing. Sinaltrainal’s national president, Javier Correa, said that because of the repression, union membership has gone down from 5,400 in 1996 to 1,400 today.

The union’s campaign for an international boycott of Coca-Cola products seems to be having some effect, judging by the company’s web site, which challenges the union’s claims. About a dozen U.S. universities have taken Coca-Cola products off campus, and campaigns to get Coke off campus are taking place at over a dozen others.

Correa takes issue with Coca-Cola’s “lies to undermine the campaign.” He said, “What Coca-Cola is doing is unethical and inmoral. They want to make the world believe that they have changed and now respect human rights.”

U.S. involvement

Correa noted that the U.S. government is an accomplice in all this. “The union was called to a meeting with U.S. government officials who offered to mediate ... They were never concerned when it was the union being attacked. Now that Coca-Cola is hurting, they want to get involved.”

Correa said the union is facing a similar situation with Nestlé, another company with extensive holdings in the U.S. Sinaltrainal says Nestlé, together with the Colombian government, is guilty of “the systematic violation of the human rights of workers and communities,” resulting in killings, displacements, and firings as well as the environmental contamination of poor communities.

Women, communities fight back

It is not just unions and political organizations that are trying to change the situation in Colombia. The people in Bolivar City, a poor working-class suburb just south of Bogotá, are just one example of how whole communities are fighting back.

In a number of neighborhoods, the Women’s Popular Organization (OFP, Organización Femenina Popular) is working with community residents. The OFP started in the state of Barrancabermeja in the 1980s as a response violence directed against women. While it was originally connected to the Catholic Church, it is independent now.

The OFP runs “people’s dining halls” that provide daily low-cost meals for neighbors. It also conducts educational sessions on healthy living. But its members don’t stop there. In their educational programs they teach women analytical skills, how to organize and how to defend their legal rights.

The OFP community center in Bolivar City houses a number of other groups. One of these is the Youth Association, headed by Emily Rincon, which holds a variety of cultural and educational activities, many of them linked to defending human rights. The group has about 150 members.

Another group is made up of farmers who have been displaced from their land, fleeing the paramilitaries. They remain vigilant, as paramilitary forces are still active in the area at night.

The OFP center also aids the “Grandmothers’ House,” a small meeting place where women in their 60s and 70s run programs for their peers. The house also features a library for children who do not attend school in the neighborhood.

Politics again in the fore

There are many other stories of popular resistance to exploitation and the struggle for a better Colombia among indigenous peoples, Afro-Colombians, farm workers, oil workers, urban employees and others — too many to relate here.

Some of the resistance is once again spilling into the electoral arena. On the other side of the political fence, right-wing President Alvaro Uribe is recasting his re-election campaign by calling himself a “man of peace.” When he first ran in 2002, Uribe blasted the previous government’s negotiations with the FARC as “appeasement” and swore he would defeat the FARC militarily. But he has not been able to crush the movement, and people are more concerned about seeing improvements in their daily lives.

Uribe has been connected to the right-wing paramilitaries and the drug cartels. In their unauthorized biography of Uribe, Newsweek’s Joseph Contreres and Bogota’s Fernando Garavito, who writes for El Espectador, said that when the Colombian president headed one of the country’s civil aviation agencies, he authorized the building of 100 airstrips and approved over 500 pilots licenses. Many of the licenses went to people connected to drug trafficking, they charge.

Uribe himself refuses to deny or even to discuss these charges, saying they are merely rumors.

Besides protecting the interests of transnational corporations in Colombia, the paramilitaries are also active in controlling the trade routes for drug trafficking, according to union and people’s organizations. Paramilitary chief Carlos Castaños has admitted this is where they have gotten the bulk of their financing.

Uribe boasts that he has been able to “negotiate” the demobilization of a number of paramilitary forces. Basically what happens, critics say, is the paramilitaries “put down their arms” but get to keep whatever ill-begotten monies they have accumulated. This amounts to legitimizing drug profits.

Using these monies, paramilitary leaders have run for political office. In the recent elections, for example, paramilitary-linked candidates won 35 percent of the seats. Together with other conservative forces, they were able to win a majority of seats for the right wing.

But that is not the whole story. The left in Colombia launched a united slate in the elections and increased its representation in Congress by a third, garnering 1 million votes, its highest tally ever.

The struggle continues.

José A. Cruz (jacruz@pww.org) is editor of Nuestro Mundo.

Transit union fights binding arbitration

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 05:52:00 +0000

NEW YORK — Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents this city’s bus and subway workers, has been ordered by a state agency into binding arbitration with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, but the union plans to fight the order.

Local 100 struck in late December after the MTA gave its “last offer,” which included a two-tier pension system. Current workers would continue to pay 2 percent into their pension fund, while new hires would pay 6 percent. The union said this provision would create disunity among the workers.

The strike resulted in a contract proposal that included some new benefits and no two-tier pension system. A union membership vote narrowly rejected the contract, however. Many workers cited a new charge for health care and false claims by Gov. George Pataki that he would be able to veto important provisions of the contract as the reason for their “no” vote.

Upon returning to the bargaining table, the MTA pulled all the provisions of the rejected contract off the table and pushed for binding arbitration.

New York’s Taylor Law bars public employee strikes and calls for binding arbitration if both sides reach an impasse. However, arbitrators are generally biased toward the employers.

Now, the union plans to resubmit the contract to its membership for a re-vote. Charles Jenkins, chair of the local’s Line Equipment Section and a membership outreach organizer, told the World that a meeting was scheduled to decide “when and how.” The decision follows a petition campaign that gathered thousands of signatures for a new vote.

Union leaders believe that the contract will easily pass. They say given the choice between binding arbitration, where workers are known to often lose, or the contract, workers will likely accept the contract.

Both the MTA and the TWU must agree to the proposed contract. The MTA currently says it will not, but the union argues that the MTA will be pressured to do so.

Nationwide strike rocks Greece

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 05:31:00 +0000

ATHENS, Greece — Several months of intensified trade union activity in Greece culminated in a nationwide strike March 15 where thousands upon thousands of working people, the unemployed, university and high school students and pensioners flooded the streets in more than 60 cities in a defiant stand against the repressive, anti-worker measures of the Greek government and the European Union.

Living and working conditions have dramatically deteriorated here as a result of anti-worker, anti-people EU “mandates,” which serve only to increase monopoly profits while stripping working people of their basic rights.

The EU summit of March 23-24 announced a new series of measures that would in essence abolish fundamental workplace rights, dismantle social security systems and create colossal energy monopolies, all in the name of fostering “increased competitiveness.”

In the face of these moves, Aleka Papariga, general secretary of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), declared, “In Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, people are being murdered by bombings. In Greece and in the other countries of the EU, people are being murdered by anti-social security, anti-health-care and anti-people measures and by the merciless exploitation of the workers.”

Papariga went on to affirm the power of mass action to turn the situation around: “We can do it in Greece and all over Europe as long as a genuine class-oriented, working people’s movement is developed, a movement of all people’s forces. We can destroy their plans and start our own ‘war’ for people’s needs and the rights of working people.”

The marchers demanded new collective bargaining agreements that meet the needs of today’s workers, including a minimum wage of $63 (52 euros) a day and a minimum salary of $1,560 a month. They demanded full, stable employment for all, with a seven-hour workday and a five-day workweek, i.e. a 35-hour workweek, and an end to the “liberalization” of working hours.

The marchers called for a freeze on all firings, and said “no” to all privatization schemes in public services, health care and pensions. They demanded that women be able to retire at age 55 and men at 60 (even earlier for hazardous occupations) with a baseline pension of $1,264 a month.

They demanded free political and trade union action, and called for the repeal of “anti-terrorism” laws whose only effect has been to curb democratic rights. Interestingly, in tandem with recent U.S. marchers, they called for the full legalization of immigrants and the recognition of their equal rights.

The highly successful weeklong strike of ship workers in February, which immobilized major ports in Greece despite the vicious reaction of the government and ship owners, set the stage for militant actions on March 15. The ship workers’ strike was supported by trade union federations across the country, many of which held 24-hour solidarity walkouts.

Building on the organizational base and the successes of these recent actions, the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) has called for a 24-hour general strike for April 13 in response to the Greek industrialist association’s proposal for a 3.9 percent wage increase (a mere $24 a month increase, on average) and its moves to dismantle national collective bargaining.

PAME is an alliance of union federations and locals that since 1997 has sought to build a militant, class-oriented trade union movement. Their broad-based, community supported rallies, national and local strike initiatives and relentless organizing have managed to spur major changes in the “business unionism” approach of the General Confederation of Greek Workers.

Massive strike in France against jobs law

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 05:29:00 +0000

PARIS (AP) — At least 1 million of protesters poured onto France’s streets and absent workers hobbled transport services March 28 in the first nationwide strike against a new labor law for youths, increasing pressure on the embattled prime minister to withdraw the contested measure.

Marches took place in scores of cities and towns.

“We have to defend the rights that were won by our ancestors and which the current government is trying to take away,” said Maxime Ourly, a literature student who joined thousands protesting on Paris’ Left Bank.

The new jobs law would let companies dismiss workers under 26 without cause during their first two years on the job — a provision students and labor unions say will erode France’s workplace protections and leave youths even more vulnerable.

But conservative Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin says the greater flexibility will encourage companies to hire young workers, who face a 22-percent unemployment rate, the highest in Western Europe.

As the strike unfolded, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy called for a suspension of the new contract, in a clear break with Villepin.

“The contract must not be applied during the talks,” Sarkozy told members of the ruling UMP party, which he heads.

Protesters in Paris said they want to defend the status quo.

“We are here for our children. We are very worried about what will happen to them,” said Philippe Decrulle, an Air France flight attendant. “My son is 23, and he has no job. That is normal in France.”

Light rain did not dampen the festive atmosphere, with red union flags and balloons floating over the marchers and stands selling them sausages.

Newsstands also were empty of national dailies because of the strike. State-run radio France-Info, a top source of daily news for the French, aired only music. France-2 television broadcast its morning show in a smaller-than-usual studio, with some technicians on strike.

The strike slowed train, plane, subway and bus services across the country to a fraction of normal levels. It was the first time that unions had ordered walkouts in solidarity with students spearheading protests against the job contract.

France’s top five labor union federations also refused Villepin’s invitation to meet for talks, insisting that he shelve the contract first.

How the corporate right lies about union corruption

Sat, 25 Mar 2006 04:35:00 +0000

Ah, the corporate right has launched a new anti-labor front group called UnionFacts.org, dealing in dark tales of union corruption. Of course, you can judge the likely accuracy of the site by the fact that its been set up by the professional lobbyist who helped found the Beverage Institute, the nice folks who tell the public soda pop has no role in childhood obesity and that Mothers Against Drunk Driving are radical ideologues.

But looking over the web site offers a good chance to walk folks through how corporations lie about things like union corruption. Not that among the 15 million union members and tens of thousands of union staff there aren’t a few bad folks, but what’s amazing is how much the opposition has to lie and pump up the numbers to make it seem at all significant.

For example, if you check out the UnionFacts.org page on “Union Leader Fraud and Corruption,” they list $400 million in “labor racketeering” fines and civil restitution in the last five years.

Sounds bad for the union leaders, doesn’t it?

But since the information comes from the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General, it’s worth going to the source. And if you go to the DOL’s labor racketeering site, they have a “Statistics” page with the same numbers on “labor racketeering” as on the anti-union site.

But let’s look in more detail at what counts as “labor racketeering” by reading the most recent Semi-Annual Report to the Congress by the office. Some of the problems in the union movement are very real, including fighting crime influence on the East Coast longshoremen union, but when you get to the money fines, suddenly the defendants largely stop being union officials. Instead, they are businesses that defrauded the unions — i.e., the unions were the victims, not the criminals. Here are a few examples:

Peter Wong, who controlled Pacific Group Medical Association (PGMA), pled guilty on June 14, 2005, to charges of insurance fraud and money laundering. In 1997, PGMA failed with more than $18 million in unpaid medical claims, making it one of the largest health plan failures in Hawaii’s history. PGMA had provided health coverage for 26,000 people, including members of United Public Workers Union Local 646.

On Aug. 22, 2005, Robert Boyd, a former Evergreen Securities Ltd. official, was sentenced to 37 months imprisonment and three years probation. On Oct. 3, 2005, Martin Boelens Jr., another company official, was sentenced to 46 months imprisonment and three years of supervised release. Both were ordered to pay more than $25 million and $14 million respectively, in restitution for fraudulently obtaining monies from investors and pension funds to be used for their personal benefit and that of others.

In April 2005, Dennis Lambka and Ronald Bray, officers of Simplified Employment Services, were sentenced to 54 months and 60 months in prison, respectively, and both received three years probation. They were also ordered to pay, jointly and severally, restitution of $55,136,267. Lambka and Bray previously pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit the following offenses: embezzlement from an employee benefit plan, defrauding the U.S., and bank fraud. Restitution will be paid to the victims of the embezzlement schemes that resulted in unpaid medical bills.

In fact, almost all of the big money associated with the $400 million figure in “labor racketeering” was committed by private industry against unions, not by union officials. But that’s how you lie with statistics. Throw around a word like “labor racketeering” while only talking about union officials and leave the impression that the crime only involves acts by unions, not acts where unions and their members are the victims.

And remember, this is data from the Bush administration and with all their resources gunning to indict union leaders, most of the fish they catch are still corporate criminals.

Corporate flacks can keep putting out their propaganda, but it’s ultimately hard to take K Street lobbyists seriously as they beat their chests about supposed union ethical failings. Obviously, any union illegal conduct should be rooted out, but in a world of multibillion corporate corruption, from Enron to defense contractor rip-offs of the public, unions are models of integrity, especially in comparison to many of the criminals running corporate America.

Nathan Newman is a union and community activist and policy director of Progressive Legislative Action Network. This article is reprinted from The Progressive Populist by permission of the author.

Struggle to save jobs at Winchester continues

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 10:46:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The struggle to save unionized manufacturing jobs and continue the 140-year production of Winchester sporting arms in New Haven has attracted national and international attention as the Belgian Herstal Group prepares to close its US Repeating Arms Company (USRAC) factory doors on March 31.

Workers and community activists began organizing when the January announcement was made, bringing public attention to the devastating impact the closing will have on the 180 workers, the African American community where the plant is located, and the entire city. The company has enjoyed $17 million in tax abatements which are tied to the retention of jobs.

A neighborhood meeting, plant gate rally and public hearing initiated by the Winchester Citizens Ad Hoc Committee have forced action to hold the company accountable. City officials are seeking cooperation from the company to find a new buyer and keep the Winchester trademark in New Haven, while at the same time preparing for possible legal action if necessary. Three potential buyers have expressed interest.

The company dismantled USRAC department by department in violation of a 1993 tax abatement agreement with the city, according to testimony by Winchester workers before a committee of the New Haven Board of Aldermen on March 16.

“They came in here like thieves and robbers,” said toolmaker Larry Edwards.

If production is moved, the agreement requires six months notice and reimbursement of all abatements. The company claims it is closing and not relocating.

Workers’ testimony confirmed removal of machinery to Columbia, S.C., during Christmas shutdown, and earlier removal of the wood shop, barrel shop and other production to Portugal and Japan. A new Russian Winchester plant was announced after the company gave notice it was going out of business.

The union, IAM Victory Lodge 609, is in tough negotiations over severance pay. The workers will be eligible for Trade Readjustment Act assistance.

“This company has taken the collective skills, experience and knowledge for 140 years of worksmanship and moved it to continue making profits,” Craig Gauthier, chair of the Ad Hoc Committee, told the aldermen. He urged them to “take appropriate legal action” and require the company to continue wages and benefits for six months, continue seniority for five years, guaranteeing everyone severance and pensions, and to continue health benefits for two years.

“You can make history by fulfilling this resolution,” Gauthier testified. “It is only just, since the city and state invested their time, money and most precious resources — our workers’ lives — in this matter.”

“I watched Winchester from the ninth floor of my apartment building as a kid,” said Don Harris, recalling his first day of work in 1995 as a dream come true. “It’s wrong to get tax money and then close.”

Carey Dawson started working at USRAC in 2000. “Someone has to step up to the plate so that after the smoke clears and USRAC is gone we will still have jobs at the New Haven plant,” Dawson said.

Perfect pension storm revisited

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 10:00:00 +0000

Some time ago this paper surveyed the approach of a “perfect storm” of economic assaults on the U.S. private pension system. Not entirely unmindful of the weather, the U.S. Republican-controlled Congress, under the leadership of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and new House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), constructed companion bills promising to restore the U.S. pension system to stability.

Levees breached

The result of their efforts resembles FEMA’s preparations for Katrina. The pathetic legislation now being completed in a House-Senate conference committee, rather than strengthening the pension system, would actually weaken it, according to a little-noticed analysis by the government’s pension agency. After numerous changes, exceptions and blandishments pressed by airline, manufacturers and other lobbyists, the agency’s report projects that the House and Senate bills would lower corporate contributions to the already under-financed pension system by $140 billion to $160 billion in the next three years.

As the legislative response to this storm awaits a final vote, assets in American private defined-benefit pension plans took a step backward in 2005, dropping 2 percent to $1.769 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Board’s flow of funds data. The levees, so to speak, are already breached.

That shortfall raises the certainty of more pension plans failing. These liabilities will, of course, fall on working-class taxpayers. (The same legislators want to make the mammoth Bush corporate tax cuts permanent.)

According to Jeremy I. Bulow, an economist at Stanford University specializing in pensions and Social Security, “It takes a better economist than me to understand how reducing contributions by that much is going to protect benefits and put the system on a sounder footing.”

Can’t trust private industry

The lessons of this sad tale are two: First, private industry cannot be trusted with management of any long-term social responsibility like pension benefits for employees. And second, our bought-and-paid-for Congress cannot protect us from this failure.

The choices for working people who want to keep their pensions are also two:

• Compel corporations to fulfill their responsibilities.

• Completely nationalize and reorganize the U.S. pension system, removing corporate prerogatives altogether.

Both solutions would require dumping the (with a few noteworthy exceptions) bought-and-paid-for Congress. But, like health coverage, many employers would actually heave a sigh of relief (after appropriate genuflecting to the gods of anti-socialism) at losing another burden blocking investments in the areas of their expertise.

Cowardly varlets

Anyone who has ever watched the very brief moral struggle taking place behind the eyes of a CEO balancing quarterly profits against 30-year possible liabilities or, heaven forbid, a social responsibility, will not be surprised at this sorry outcome. The corporate-owned Congress, despite the threat of ruin for millions of workers, will also grieve but briefly, trusting that their preferred but largely discredited “private savings account” philosophy will now take root as the replacement for private pensions. A blizzard of blame directed at unions “excessive demands” will no doubt be the song these cowardly varlets sing to deflect the judgment they richly deserve.

Seniors are becoming enraged, and so they should be. Lets dump this poisoned parliament of putrid poltroons calling themselves congressmen in 2006, and start afresh with a new, Peoples Retirement Program.

That program, in my view, should discard employer-managed pension funds completely in favor of a publicly regulated mix of government and participant-based plans. All assets and liabilities of existing plans would be transferred to the control of such funds. The California State Employees Pension fund and TIAA-CREF, the academic and research employee fund, are two working models that, though not trouble-free, stand head and shoulders above corporate managed funds.

Further, retirement expenses are inevitably bound up with medical expenses. And a solution to fundamental reform of retirement fund management is unlikely to be found without the nationalization of health care.

Since the nation’s net pension liabilities currently exceeds actual assets by nearly $600 billion, and this shortfall is the direct result of underfunding by corporate pension management, these liabilities should be satisfied through corporate taxation or some other means of recapitalizing the underfunded plans.

This approach can liberate those companies that truly want to focus on genuine competition and secure the hard-earned retirement security of working Americans.

French protest job bill

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 07:34:00 +0000

After a weekend of protests in which 1.5 million people took to the streets, French labor unions are preparing for a general strike in response to what they call a dangerous and disturbing new law.

The law would allow employers to fire people under age 26 without cause within two years of being hired. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin claims it will ease youth unemployment. But student and labor groups say it will aggravate the problem and allow employers to treat young workers like trash.

The youth unemployment rate in France is 23 percent, more than double the general jobless rate. In the poorest areas youth joblessness is as high as 50 percent.

France’s current, long-standing labor law allows employers just a few months to terminate a new employee without giving a reason. After that, the law sets strict standards for firing employees. Opponents of the so-called “first jobs contract” (CPE) have nicknamed it the “Kleenex contract” because of the disposable workforce it would create.

The new law is to be enacted when signed by President Jacques Chirac next month.

Unions have called for a national day of strike actions on March 28 to protest the plan. Bolstered by this support, student groups called for more large-scale protests March 21 and 23.

Public figures joining protests in 150 cities on March 18 included Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, Socialist Party leader François Hollande, former culture minister Jack Lang and Communist Party leader Marie-George Buffet.

The protest in Paris was marred by minor violence, in which a small number of demonstrators set fire to a police car. In response, police fired tear gas into the crowd. By and large the march was peaceful, though, with a festive atmosphere.

Carole Cases, a nurse who participated in the protest with two of her children, told The New York Times, “I’m sick and tired of all these phony contracts and I want to protect my children’s future. They’re trying to dupe the young.”

Many were upset with the quickness with which the measure passed through the Parliament. Bruno Julliard, a leader of the national student group UNEF, said the government “imposed the jobs plan without consulting anyone.” He said the government only agreed to talks after the large demonstrations. UNEF, in turn, has refused to join talks until the contract is withdrawn.

De Villepin was expected to offer an amended version of the contract, possibly requiring

a justification for firing or shortening the trial period during which the young worker could be fired. He has said publicly that he will stand by the law and that it will not be withdrawn.

The CGT, France’s largest union federation, said in a March 21 statement, “This measure, ineffective for employment, offers employers a new means of pressuring employees to renounce most of their rights under the penalty that they will be pushed out the door: it is a welcome to unpaid additional hours, worsened work conditions, lower salaries, sick days not respected, scorned dignity, etc.”

According to the federation, 75 percent of the population wants the CPE to be withdrawn. CGT leader Bernard Thibault said, “If this momentum continues, I think we will quickly get the withdrawal.”

In a January statement, the Communist Party of France stated its opposition to the CPE. Instead, the party proposed “a large progressive reformation of the labor code, aiming for job security … and income for all.” The statement also called for businesses to be socially responsible.

In addition to the planned labor strikes, UNEF has led student strikes at a number of universities. Student groups also worry that the CPE would make housing problems worse for young workers. Many landlords won’t rent to young workers because of their precarious financial situation.

“There is a big housing crisis in France. With this contract, no young workers will be able to get an apartment,” said Julie Coudry, president of the Student Confederation.

The new law is seen as part of pro-corporate “structural reforms” called for by international financial institutions. European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said March 20 it was absolutely necessary for European governments to conduct such “reforms.”

PORTRAITS: Honoring the women who make our clothing

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 13:34:00 +0000

When the people of White Salmon, Wash., stepped into their community library last fall, they probably didn’t think they’d be leaving without the labels on their clothing. That is unless they knew they were going to encounter Janet Essley’s interactive painting exhibit titled “Presente: She is Here With Us.”

Essley, a visual artist who lives in the rural, northwest town, displayed her portraits of women garment workers from around the world along with “doll” forms, a map of the world, scissors, and safety pins. As part of the exhibit, the public was invited to cut the labels off their own clothing and pin them to the doll forms. Over the course of the month, several of the dolls evolved into a visceral “graph” of where the clothing in most American closets is made — 20 percent U.S., 20 percent Mexico and Central America, 20 percent Southeast Asia, 20 percent India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, a smattering from Europe, South Africa, Pacific Islands, Arabian Peninsula, and the rest from China.

“These women are valued because they adapt easily to industrial discipline, are quiet, patient, and dexterous. Each is willing to work 40, 60, 80 hours a week, often as the sole support of her family, at subsistence wages in even the poorest of countries. ... She does this because corporate globalization has crushed the traditional world into which she was born ... including the U.S. The paintings encourage a globalization of empathy and the human right for work with dignity,” Essley says.

For more information about this exhibit or to arrange to bring it to an event or venue near you, contact Janet Essley at essmoy@gorge.net.

Reprinted from FaithWorks, newsletter of Interfaith Worker Justice

Equality, or not: Threat of two-tier workforce is fault line of U.S. immigration policies

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Equality has become an unmentionable word in Congress. It doesn’t come even once in the 300-page omnibus immigration bill introduced last week by Senator Arlen Specter, nor in any of the others Congress is considering. They all deny equality to millions of people. In the testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Specter chairs, no one even dares to advocate it.

Is this what we stand for?

The assumption that reinforcing social inequality is a good idea defines the basic difference in direction between those in Washington, like Specter, urging new immigration restrictions, and those who want to stop them.

Sheila Jackson Lee, Houston’s African American Congresswoman, calls immigration “the civil rights struggle of our time.” Immigrants crossing borders, she says, want the same thing sought by Black people trying to recover from slavery and Jim Crow – equal rights, to really belong to the communities where they live, and economic opportunity for their families.

Yet Congress is divided between the supposed “conservatives” who want to stop immigration and turn the undocumented into criminals, and the “liberals” who want to give employers new guest worker programs. Both proposals will cause immense suffering and benefit only a tiny elite.

There is an alternative, in best traditions of our country – the expansion of rights for all people.

Second-class status for immigrants affects all labor

To Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice-president of the AFL-CIO, guest worker programs are like the old South’s Jim Crow strictures. “There is absolutely no good reason,” she says, “why any immigrant who comes to this country prepared to work, to pay taxes, and to abide by our laws and rules should be relegated to a repressive, second-class guest worker status.”

Specter’s bill (which President Bush supports) treats migrants as people completely separate from the community surrounding them. In 1954 the Supreme Court found that such forcible separation bred inequality.

Some 10-12 million people, according to the Pew Hispanic Trust, now live in the United States without proper immigration documents. Poverty and global inequality, produced largely by current free trade policies, have already displaced 170 million people from their countries of origin, according to Geneva-based Migrant Rights International. With no change in those policies, people will continue to cross borders.

For the undocumented already here, the bill holds no promise of rights and equal status. Instead, it requires them to report to immigration authorities and apply for work permits. If approved, they get no visa or even formal permission to stay in the country, much less any prospect of obtaining citizenship in the future. If they become unemployed, they will be deported, regardless of the roots they and their families have planted.

For those migrants yet to come, the bill draws an even harsher line. Corporations and labor contractors see them as a convenient source of low-wage labor. Specter’s bill will let them recruit immigrants to work in the U.S. for three years, renewable for another three. After that, they must leave.

Almost all the bills in Congress increase penalties for working without papers, to ensure that the undocumented sign up as contract laborers, and that temporary migrants don’t simply walk away from these new bracero programs. Social Security inspectors, abandoning their historic mission of ensuring that people receive pension and disability benefits, will become the workplace police, requiring every U.S. employee to carry a national work permit.

But history shows that making work a crime doesn’t create employment for anyone, although it does weaken unions and lowers wages. Nebraska’s huge Operation Vanguard workplace enforcement operation in 1998, for instance, didn’t produce a single job for citizens or legal residents.

Guest worker programs — same leopard, different spots

Specter’s bill will provide companies a seamless transition from an undocumented workforce to workers on temporary visas facing certain termination and deportation. But it won’t give workers a way to become full members of the communities they live in.

These ideas bear the fingerprints of the Bush administration, which proposed the same basic scheme in January. Their main promoter since 1998 has been the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, which includes 43 of the largest corporate industry associations in the U.S., including Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods and other large employers of immigrant labor. As the president so often puts it, the idea is to connect willing employers with willing employees.

For two years, a few unions and Washington, D.C., lobby groups have hoped that a milder guest worker and enforcement regime might be attached to a promise of legal status for the undocumented. Their proposal, sponsored by Senators John McCain and Edward Kennedy, has stalled, however, as congressional Republicans line up behind Specter and Bush.

In the new Change to Win union federation, two unions still support the basic guest worker/legalization tradeoff – the Service Employees and Unite Here, the union for hotel and clothing workers. Two other unions in the federation, however, have spoken out against it – the Teamsters and the United Food and Commercial Workers.

In a recent letter to The New York Times, UFCW President Joe Hansen cautioned that “historically, guest worker programs have led to worker mistreatment. There’s every reason to believe that an expanded guest worker program would lead to increased worker abuse at a time when the current climate is to relax, if not outright ignore, labor protections in many workplaces.” For the UFCW, “a constructive immigration policy would respect and provide a legalization process for the millions of immigrant workers already contributing to our economy and society, while protecting wages and workplace protections for all workers.”

Equal rights, path to citizenship

Meanwhile, other unions in the AFL-CIO have become the most vocal critics of Congress’ proposed reforms. Comparing the Specter bill to the reviled bracero program of the 1940s and ’50s, Chavez-Thompson calls for “a more just and democratic immigration system that protects the interests of all workers–immigrants and U.S.-born alike.”

Reform proposals, she says, must provide a clear path to permanent residency, and enforcement of workplace standards.

“We certainly don’t need more programs that see immigrants just as cheap labor,” says Cathi Tactaquin, director of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, “that segregate them and treat them as less than equal. Congress isn’t offering real protection for native or foreign born workers — just a lot of tough talk and guest worker programs.”

Chavez-Thompson warns that Congress’ current direction will produce “an undemocratic, two-tiered society. We should embrace [immigrant] workers not as ‘guests’ but as full members of society — as permanent residents with full rights and full mobility.”

The choice between second-class status and equality has always been the faultline in U.S. racial, labor and immigration policies.

It still is.

Reprinted from a March 3 Truthout/Perspective. Bacon (dbacon.igc.org), a California photojournalist, documents labor, migration and globalization. His book “The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border” was published last year by University of California Press.

Immigration bills in Congress

• HR 2092: Introduced last spring by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, this bill takes a radically different approach from all others. It has no guest worker provision. It grants legal status to anyone living in the United States for five years from the date of passage. It enforces protections for the rights of migrants. It requires that fees paid by those applying for legal status be used for job training and creation programs in communities with high unemployment. It makes it easier for immigrants to reunite their families.

• HR 4437: Introduced in December 2005 by Wisconsin Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, this bill would make undocumented status a felony, as well as any action by another person (nurses, teachers, religious leaders, etc.) to assist an undocumented immigrant. It would build a wall along 700 miles of the U.S./Mexico border and increase enforcement of employer sanctions. It has no guest worker or legalization provision. It would require the immediate detention and deportation of any undocumented person.

• HR 2330/S 1033: Introduced by Sens. John McCain and Edward Kennedy, this “bipartisan” bill would allow employers to recruit 400,000 guest workers under temporary visas every year. Undocumented immigrants could also get temporary visas. Both would be able to apply for legal status after four and six years, respectively. The bill would increase enforcement of employer sanctions, including sanctions by Social Security and the Department of Labor, and increase border enforcement as well. It would make it easier for immigrants to reunite their families.

• S 1438: Introduced in July 2005 by Sens. John Cornyn and Jon Kyl, this bill would allow corporations to recruit workers under two-year temporary visas. It would allow undocumented workers to qualify for temporary visas also, but they would have to leave the country to apply, and then again after five years. Ten thousand new immigration agents would enforce the prohibition on undocumented immigrants holding jobs, and prisons would be built to house 10,000 deportees.

N.Y. transit leader calls for new vote

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 11:15:00 +0000

NEW YORK — The battle between bus and subway workers represented by Transport Workers Union Local 100 and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority continues. Last week, over the objections of the MTA, the Public Employee Relations Board ordered both sides back to the bargaining table.

Meanwhile, the contract negotiated between the TWU leadership and the MTA, which was rejected Jan. 20 by seven votes, seems to be gaining new life. As of press time, Local 100 President Roger Toussaint had reportedly announced that he would ask the union’s executive board to send the contract back to the membership for a re-vote, saying that he thought that now there is a much greater chance it would be accepted.

Prior to Toussaint’s announcement, a petition drive for a revote had been underway among TWU members, with the NY Times reporting that the petitions had received “thousands” of signatures.

The MTA is still pushing for binding arbitration. In arbitration, their demands would, among other things, raise pension costs to employees from the current two percent to six percent.

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1056, which represents workers at three bus depots in Queens, approved the contract with a 79 percent vote. Earlier, ATU Local 726, representing Staten Island bus drivers, voted overwhelmingly to approve. This means that the contract would go into effect for at least some MTA-NYCT workers.

The contract was negotiated after a pre-Christmas strike. The “final offer” of the MTA sparked the strike, in large part due to a demand for a two-tier pension system, which the union argued would divide workers into “two hostile camps.”

The strike — marked by racist criticism from the city’s mayor and New York Gov. George Pataki, but also widespread support from the city’s labor movement and the population as a whole — was called off after the MTA agreed to certain demands, including dropping the two-tier pension proposal.

The contract that the TWU’s leadership and the MTA agreed on left the pension system intact and introduced such new benefits as maternity leave, strengthened health insurance for retirees, and a new holiday. However, it also included a new 1.5 percent charge on income for health insurance.

The contract was rejected by a slim majority of the membership, who voted 11,234 against and 11,227 in favor. For most of the workers, the new payment for health care was hard to swallow, given that the MTA had a huge budget surplus.

The interference of Pataki in the process also affected the contract vote. The agreed-on contract called for a big refund for many transit workers from the pension fund. The refund would have somewhat offset the new health care cost. Pataki sowed confusion by repeatedly threatening to veto the refund provision.

In a related development, a March 3 trial based on New York’s Taylor Law — which would have included the possibility of fines on members and the union, loss of the union’s right to automatic dues check-off and the jailing of the TWU leadership — has been postponed to allow the TWU and MTA to continue negotiations. The Taylor Law outlaws strikes by public employees. The NYC labor movement had been planning a major display of solidarity to defend the TWU and oppose the Taylor Law.

"Were here to stay!" Nations largest immigrant rights rally rocks Windy City

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 07:13:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the city and surrounding areas marched here March 10 in one of the biggest pro-immigrant demonstrations in U.S. history, displaying massive support for immigrant rights.

Established immigrant rights groups, along with new immigrant groups, spearheaded the event with a word-of-mouth campaign that quickly spread through the Spanish-language media and eventually ballooned, grabbing the attention of the entire city by midday. The turnout surpassed organizers’ expectations. CNN reported 300,000-400,000 participated, while Spanish-language media said a half million. Police estimated 100,000-plus.

The march began at Union Park on the Near West Side and jammed the streets for two miles. Mexicans, Guatemalans and other Latinos along with Polish, Irish and Chinese people marched with community organizations and labor unions.

Students and moms pushing strollers marched alongside construction workers, mechanics and senior citizens. Immigrant families, many carrying U.S. and Mexican flags, flooded into the Federal Plaza rally. Speaker after speaker argued for pro-immigrant legislation and against HR 4437, a bill that would criminalize undocumented workers and anyone who helps them.

It’s not just about undocumented workers, it’s about human beings and basic rights,” truck driver Pedro Hernandez told the Sun Times. Although stuck in traffic, just a few blocks from his last delivery of the day because of the protest, he supported the marchers.

The House passed HR 4437, introduced by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.). The bill makes it a felony for any undocumented worker to be here and for anyone to help or provide a service to them, be it religious, medical, humanitarian or educational.

The debate on immigration has now shifted to the Senate, where Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) introduced an immigration reform plan, or “chairman’s mark,” which takes elements from several legislative proposals but leans heavily on harsh measures from HR 4437.

The Chicago outpouring shows that these repressive bills have awakened a “sleeping giant,” observers said. Marchers stood shoulder-to-shoulder holding signs that read, “To the Minutemen: Stop, don’t shoot! I clean your toilets,” and “I’m not a criminal or a terrorist, I’m a dishwasher.” Others said, “Keep our families together,” “No human being is illegal” and “We are not criminals, we are workers.”

Chants of “Pueblo escucha, estamos en la lucha” (“People listen, together we’re in the struggle”), “Si se puede” (“Yes, it can be done”) and “El pueblo unido, jamas sera vencido” (“The people united will never be defeated”) echoed through the packed streets.

Workers from Passaglia’s West Loop Auto Body shop stopped working and climbed on the rooftop, hoisting a large sign expressing unity with the thousands of marchers passing by. “I think it’s great for so many people standing up for a cause they believe in,” said owner Drew Passaglia to the Sun Times.

Whole shifts of workers left their jobs to show their solidarity with immigrant rights. Jalapeno Produce in Round Lake, Ill., closed and sent 100 workers to march. One server from an Italian restaurant came in his work tie and apron, draped with a U.S. flag. Other workers wore their construction hardhats, and came straight from their job sites. Clerks from the El Guero market in Aurora piled into the store’s delivery van, riding on produce boxes.

Hundreds of high school students were no-shows, and officials speculated that most of them attended the rally. At Farragut Career Academy on the Southwest side, about half the 2,500 students walked out after attendance was taken at 10:40 a.m. Josue Martinez, a Tilden High School senior who attended the march, told the Tribune, “We’re supporting our parents and our parents’ parents, who came here and worked hard.”

One worker said he hadn’t seen that many people in downtown Chicago since the ticker-tape parade was held for the Chicago White Sox after they won the World Series last year.

The rally brought together some of the state’s most powerful elected officials, including dozens of alderman and state lawmakers.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich addressed the massive crowd in Spanish, telling them that he is the son of immigrant parents and understands the issues that are important to them. “Ustedes no son criminales. Ustedes son trabajadores” (“You are not criminals. You are workers”), the governor said.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said this is a new phase and a new struggle for the immigrant community. He called on the crowd to shut the Senate down if a Sensenbrenner-like bill is passed.

“This is a movement of immigrants; we have brought the Irish, the Polish, the Chinese and the Central and South Americans here today. Raise those American flags, because this is our country and we’re here to stay,” Gutierrez said.

Democratic Congressman Bobby Rush fired up the crowd chanting, “Power to the people,” while Sen. Dick Durbin also roused the audience. Durbin has introduced S.2075, the Development, Relief and Education For Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which offers legal residence to children of undocumented parents so they can go to college and get a job. Durbin sent a special message “to the children,” saying, “I will fight to pass the DREAM Act as long as I live.”

Cartoon book depicts labors fighting spirit

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 09:58:00 +0000

The opinion cartoon on a newspaper’s editorial page has more impact than any block of copy. A cartoon quickly draws the reader in visually and can make a statement quickly. The drawing simplifies a subject, making it digestible for readers.

Today editorial cartoons have become the political version of comic strips. That wasn’t always the case. There was a time when the editorial cartoon attacked serious subjects with symbolic power that far exceeds today’s descendants. There is nothing wrong with using humor in editorial cartoons, but for serious subjects making too much fun diminishes the impact. A funny cartoon about George W. Bush negates his evil policies. The result is just another page decoration. Very seldom is real outrage elicited. No one today draws images with the power of the legendary Robert Minor or even Bill Mauldin.

Ben Yomen, called the “dean of American labor cartoonists,” comes from that older tradition, which relies less on jokes and more on symbolism. With a grease pencil, black ink, textured paper and a working-class sensibility, he lambasted the politicians and attitudes of the mid-20th century. Leafing through Yomen’s new book, “In Labor’s Corner,” is like taking a long stroll through labor history.

Born in 1911, Yomen’s family moved from Massachusetts to Detroit when he was four. His father, a union activist, helped organize the Machinists Union in Boston and was one of the first to join UAW Chrysler Local 7.

But Yomen’s involvement with art-for-labor began with a life-changing experience. In 1932, police arrested Yomen and two artist friends who were sketching the Ford Hunger March in Dearborn, Mich. When police saw the artists’ sketch pads, they arrested the three as “suspects.” The experience of the hunger march, in which five workers were killed by company guards, changed Yomen’s outlook on life. “From that time on, using cartoons as a weapon, I would target bosses who had no respect for workers,” he said.

From the 1930s through the 1990s, Yomen drew for many union and labor-oriented publications, including the UAW’s magazine Ammunition. “In Labor’s Corner” presents cartoons about labor’s role in World War II, including its battles with some U.S. capitalists’ fascist sympathies, for higher wages and against the Taft-Hartley law.

Also published are Yomen’s “The Filet of Soul” cartoons, which addressed issues of African American equality and integration in the late 1960s. The series appeared in the Detroit Free Press.

While working for the now defunct Federated Press, a labor news service, Yomen created a reactionary character called Congressman Dripp. Dripp represented the violently anti-labor and anti-FDR attitude of many in Congress. Dripp railed against unionizing, pensions and wages. With these cartoons, Yomen was able to use more humor to ridicule that element of the “bought and sold” representatives who marched lockstep with business interests. Times haven’t changed very much. Give Dripp a more modern look and he could easily represent the current Republican-controlled Congress.

Yomen’s editorial cartoons took on a more serious tone as he commented on the war effort against Nazi Germany, or the labor movement and Congress. Again, it is amazing how the politics of 60 years ago mirror our own. Taxes on the working class, job losses and attacks on economic rights were as prevalent then as they are now.

It should be the cartoonist’s job to stab his pen into the heart of these beasts. Sadly, today’s editorial cartoonists seldom side with labor or even concern themselves with issues of the working class in anything other than a superficial way. I suspect that this has more to do with the political motivations of the corporate owned newspapers than the abilities of cartoonists.

A copy of “In Labor’s Corner” can be ordered from Ben Yomen, 1073 Barton Dr., Apt. 102, Ann Arbor, MI 48105. It costs $20 plus $3 shipping.

Gulf Coast Update

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 07:33:00 +0000

Bodies still being found

Six months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, bodies are still being pulled from wrecked and rotting homes. Firefighters in hard hats with cadaver dogs found the latest victim on March 6 in a Lower 9th Ward house that had been inspected months ago.

The official door-to-door search of New Orleans ended on Oct. 3 with a death toll of 972. Since then, 131 more bodies have been found. Thousands of people are still missing. The Corps of Engineers said as many as 400 victims could still be buried beneath all of the rubble.

But bulldozers moved into the Lower 9th Ward on March 6, which angered some residents. Tracy Washington, an activist against the demolition said, “What is the rush? There is not to be any demolition in this area right now. If they continue, they will be in direct violation of a court order.”

Bush, lies and videotape

In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, U.S. disaster officials warned President George W. Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans’ Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.

Bush did not ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck Aug. 29, but he assured state officials: “We are fully prepared.”

The footage shows in excruciating detail that federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast. Yet Bush declared four days after the storm, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”

Immigrant workers win back pay

Lured by contractors promising jobs and good wages, Gulf Coast reconstruction has brought thousands of immigrant workers to the area.

But the promises rang hollow. Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, a Jackson-based immigrant rights group, talked with several thousand workers and reported, “There is not one that does not have a story of abuse, injury or homelessness.” MIRA filed hundreds of complaints, helping to recover $220,000 for workers to date, including $141,800 for 120 workers cheated out of pay by a Halliburton subcontractor.

Act to extend jobless benefits

140,000 workers left unemployed by Hurricane Katrina started running out of federal jobless benefits on March 4. The Senate unanimously passed a bill, the Katrina Emergency Assistance Act, that would extend those benefits by 13 weeks. The House of Representatives needs to do the same. Help Katrina survivors today by writing your representative and asking him or her to support S 1777, the Katrina Emergency Assistance Act.

— Terrie Albano

Oakland City Council OKs card-check measure

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 07:24:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. — This city became the first to tell a cable company it must agree to recognize a union based on card check when the City Council late last month passed an ordinance requiring city franchise holders to accept the procedure. After the vote, Comcast, a company the Communications Workers of America (CWA) says consistently violates workers’ rights, said it would reject a carefully negotiated agreement extending its franchise to provide cable services in the city for 13 years.

The ordinance the City Council approved Feb. 21 says the city needs to lessen the risk of strikes, boycotts and other labor actions that could harm its economic interests by requiring “franchises in which the city has a proprietary interest” to “agree to non-confrontational and expeditious procedures” for workers to indicate their wishes about union representation.

At the same time, the Council approved the proposed franchise agreement.

Though other communities are exploring similar measures, the Oakland ordinance is the first in the nation to affect a cable company, said CWA Cable Field Coordinator Lisa Morowitz. “I don’t see why other cities wouldn’t pass similar measures” designed to protect their financial interests, she added.

Morowitz noted that similar ordinances exist in other industries, and many employers have voluntarily agreed to card check procedures.

Though the company claimed aspects of the scuttled pact had become outdated since talks started three years ago, Comcast’s action was criticized by CWA’s national President Larry Cohen as an attempt to strong-arm Oakland into dropping the protections for consumers and workers.

“Comcast has been demonstrating just this kind of confrontation in its relations with communities and workers across the country,” Cohen told reporters during the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in San Diego late last month. “Workers at Comcast locations nationwide have been illegally fired, harassed, wrongly disciplined, denied promotions, and denied benefits provided to workers at nonunion locations,” he added.

Under the agreement, Comcast was also to build a $17.4 million network expanding educational and public access options to city and school buildings, adding a portion of the cost to subscribers’ bills.

Late last year, Comcast fired dispatcher William Goodo, a 10-year worker who testified before the Council about the company’s heavy-handed attacks on its workers in Oakland.

The union is urging calls to Comcast’s East Bay Vice President Hank Fore, at (510) 567-9301, protesting Goodo’s firing and Comcast’s anti-worker stance.

Reflections on New Mexicos minimum wage fight

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 07:15:00 +0000

Commentary

New Mexico has just gone through two major campaigns to enact a higher minimum wage law. One was a ballot referendum in Albuquerque in November 2005. The other was to pass a bill in the recent session of the State Legislature to cover the whole state. Both efforts were defeated.

If the New Mexico Fair Wage Coalition is to ultimately succeed in raising the minimum wage from the federal level of $5.15 per hour to $7.50 per hour (with inflation indexing included in the law), some conclusions need to be drawn from these defeats.

In the Albuquerque campaign, two things became apparent.

First, a poorly written referendum became the subject of a tremendous scare campaign by the Chamber of Commerce that spoke directly to the self-interests and fears of the general public. The Chamber twisted a section of the proposed law that spoke about citizens seeking to inform workers about their rights into a gross perversion of the truth, namely, that it would allow “thugs” to invade businesses and schools for the purpose of disruption.

Second, there was insufficient support and participation from the section of the working class that would have directly benefited from the increase in the minimum wage. While various efforts were made to organize this section of the working class, they were not enough.

In the campaign to enact a statewide minimum wage law similar weaknesses came into play. The Republican state legislators obstructed and voted as a bloc against the minimum wage, while most Democrats tended to waver. The vacillations depended on the amount of community support the legislation could generate.

In areas outside of Albuquerque, community organizational support was not as great as in the metropolitan area. In southern New Mexico, three state senators representing border districts became the stumbling bloc to having a minimum wage law enacted.

The argument of these legislators was that low-wage labor competition from Texas and Mexico prevented them from supporting an increase in the state minimum wage. It was claimed that such a minimum wage increase would force chili food processors such as “Border Foods” to relocate to either Texas or Mexico. (Border Foods is the major employer in Deming, one of the poorest towns in New Mexico.)

Obviously the ruling class once again attacked us at our weakest point, the lack of sufficient rank-and-file community organization and support in the districts outside of Albuquerque.

It is notable that every politician, except the far-right Republicans, refrained from attacking the city minimum wage law of Santa Fe of $9.50 an hour because in that city minimum wage supporters have a solid community-labor organization to back up their demands.

Globalization and women workers

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 07:12:00 +0000

Is the “globalization” that George Bush supports good or, at least, inevitable, as people from the capitalist class claim? And what impact has it had on women workers?

Tuberculosis and malnutrition are global, and becoming more so where capitalism still rules. Obviously neither is good — or inevitable. The same applies to Bush and capitalist globalization.

For women workers, from the U.S. to Zimbabwe, globalization has brought great suffering. At the same time, women workers are often found in the lead in the struggle against unequal and unbridled “free trade” and the privatization of public assets.

The current Wall Street globalization drive began after the fall of the USSR. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement and 1995 World Trade Organization are two of their trophies. Both facilitated monopolies’ ability to move capital, effectively spreading competition among workers worldwide for dwindling jobs and wages.

Some of the resulting burdens suffered by workers are detailed in a remarkable 2004 Oxfam report, “Trading Away Our Rights.” The report says, “Globalization has hugely strengthened the negotiating hand of retailers and brand companies. New technologies, trade liberalization and capital mobility have dramatically opened up the number of countries and producers from which they can source their products.”

Oxfam’s report goes on to depict amazingly uniform and devastating working conditions, whether workers are working (ultimately) for Wal-Mart or Target, making Nike or Adidas shoes, packing fruit or sewing clothes in Morocco or Thailand, Chile or Bangladesh.

Women often form the majority of production workers — as high as 90 percent in Cambodia’s garment industry, 87 percent in Zimbabwe’s flower industry. “Commonly hired on short-term contracts, or with no contract at all,” Oxfam reports, “women are working at high speed for low wages in unhealthy conditions. They are forced to put in long hours to earn enough to get by. Most have no sick leave or maternity leave, few are enrolled in health or unemployment schemes, and fewer still have savings for the future.”

“Most women are still expected to raise children and care for sick and elderly relatives when they become cash-earners,” Oxfam continues. “They are doubly burdened, and, with little support from their governments or employers to cope with it, the stress can destroy their own health, break up their families, and undermine their children’s chances of a better future. The impacts are felt by workers in both rich and poor countries.”

Indeed. Wall Street globalization has not been kind to workers in the U.S. Superficially, women’s status appears to have improved in the U.S. since 1990. Adult women’s participation in the paid labor force increased from 57.5 percent in 1990 to 59.5 percent in 2003, a positive development. Women workers’ earnings as a percentage of men’s ostensibly rose from 71.6 percent in 1990 to 76.6 percent in 2003, while average weekly “real” earnings of hourly workers supposedly rose slightly.

But that is on the surface. Declines in wages and benefits have commonly forced greater labor force participation. The improvement in women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s applies only to the minority of women working full-time, year-round. The official (and very slight) rise in “real” wages between 1990 and 2003 does not truthfully account for the jump in the cost of housing, fuel and transport, in regressive taxes and debt service, and the decline in health insurance, pensions or unemployment compensation.

Bankruptcy filings are the terrible “proof of the pudding.” Personal bankruptcies exploded in the U.S. between 1990 and 2003, from 661,000 to 1.6 million. And the increase was greatest among women. According to Harvard bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren, by 2002 the single best predictor for a bankruptcy filing was a woman having a child. Bankruptcy rates of single mothers, nearly the same as for all others in 1981, were almost 200 percent higher by 2001.

The Communist movement has a historic commitment to end all forms of social inequality, including that between men and women, everywhere. The capitalist “globalization” George Bush loves increases competition among workers worldwide, with the greatest inequalities falling on women. Our answer to Wall Street’s international agreements includes uniting workers of the world with good jobs and equal pay for all.

98.6 a healthy number

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 11:59:00 +0000

Ninety-eight point six is a symbol of good health and that’s the percent of members of Change to Win unions in California whose locals have submitted solidarity charters and are now considered full members of the California AFL-CIO, said Art Pulaski, president of the state federation.

With that unity secured, Pulaski and San Diego labor council leader Jerry Butkiewicz confidently laid out an ambitious plan for mobilizing the federation’s 2 million members for the 2006 elections at a press conference during the winter meeting of the AFL-CIO executive council here.

The state organization already has a well-tuned campaign machine coming out of last fall’s special election in which voters roundly defeated four anti-working families initiatives promoted by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The federation has pulled together a strategic planning committee including both AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions. Goals include mobilization of 25,000 member volunteers.

Butkiewicz was clearly delighted with the prospect of the adding the strength of this city’s 10,000 school teachers, NEA members who he expects to quickly affiliate with the San Diego labor council. There’ll be no more pitting worker against worker, he said. “School board candidates are in for a big surprise,” he continued, “and all workers will be together.”

The World of Peggy Lipschutz: Women, workers, angels soul of her purposeful art

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 10:42:00 +0000

Peggy Lipschutz, 87, picked up a small brush and eyed an unfinished painting. She added a dab of color to the figure of an older woman sitting in thought, with an angel in the background.

The painting is one of several this Chicago artist-with-a-cause has been working on.

In one luminous painting, two women, faces lined with lifetimes of care and struggle, sit across a table in conversation. In another, a strong-featured older woman reads a letter as her gray-haired friend stands close.

“In these paintings of senior women, I wanted to show how important they are to each other, the friendship, support, love,” Lipschutz told me on a recent winter day. “I painted them to show that seniors are alive and exciting, not dead people. You don’t have to fade away because you’re 80.”

Why the angels? They are “really your alter ego, your higher self,” she said. “It’s important to listen to them. Sometimes they shout at you.”

Lipschutz, certainly not fading away, is continuing to follow the angels that have called her to involvement, through her art, in just about every major social struggle in the Windy City for the past half century. Her “chalk-talks,” combining swift strokes of colored chalk and profound political insights, are legendary in labor, peace and social justice circles.

As we walked through her tidy home last December, the sunlight cast a silver glow on decades of paintings lining her walls and crowding her attic studio. Opening storage boxes she pulled out an array of booklets, newsletters, flyers and posters recording a lifetime of art with a purpose.

First steps of lifetime path

Born in England in 1918, Lipschutz studied art as a young girl, and learned social awareness from her parents. Her father, a wool merchant, put out “a little anti-fascist paper.” But he decided he could do more in the U.S. “My father came to this country to fight fascism,” she said. “He saw Hitler long before most people.”

Her family settled in New York. Lipschutz, age 19, went to work. It was before and during World War II when many jobs opened up to women for the first time. In one job, she edited and laid out training books for the Navy. She had to “explain simple machinery to guys who only had high school math.” It started her on a lifetime path of using simple line drawings to deliver a message.

Friends invited her to come to Chicago to work with the Abraham Lincoln School for Social Science, a progressive school aimed at workers, especially the thousands of Black workers who had come up from the South, many with little formal schooling. “They hired me at around $1 an hour to do their publicity,” she recalled. One project was a textbook, “Why Work For Nothing?”— a “beautiful simple explanation of Marx’s theory of value for people who could barely read.”

“I laid out this whole book and illustrated it — that was my first big cartooning job.”

But when the House Un-American Activities Committee came to Chicago, rich people who had supported the school took their money elsewhere, and the school dissolved.

She went to work for a progressive print shop where, she said, “I learned more than I learned in art school.”

In 1948, at a rally for Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party presidential campaign, Lipschutz was to illustrate Wallace’s 10-point program. “Somebody else can do the talking, I’ll do the drawing,” Lipschutz told the organizers. The talker didn’t show up, so Peggy wound up doing her first chalk-talk.

Art in union halls, at PTAs

In the years that followed, she took her drawings with a message to union halls, PTAs and other organizations. Along the way she married and raised three children.

In 1960 she began working with musician Vivian Richman, drawing to songs. They started doing concerts at Jewish community centers, combining Jewish and American folk songs. “Then we really took off,” doing concerts at schools and senior centers with themes of conflict resolution, equality and justice. “There was always a social content,” she said.

It was hard work, researching topics, finding the right images and music, and dragging a big easel board around. To do this, she said, “You have to be an artist with a passion for something.”

Lipschutz currently travels to public schools with musician Barbara Armstrong with a program about the Holocaust.

Seeing songs

Over the years Peggy and her “Songs You Can See” were part of the struggles of Chicago’s Wisconsin Steel workers, the Harold Washington mayoral campaign and scores of others. When she joined the staff of Labor Today, at the center of the rank and file upsurge of the 1970s and ’80s, her illustrations became, for a generation of labor activists, synonymous with the publication’s message of labor unity, democracy and struggle.

One of that generation, Scott Marshall, calls Lipschutz “a Chicago institution in the labor movement and the people’s movement.” Marshall, now an activist in the Steelworkers retiree group SOAR and chair of the Communist Party’s Labor Commission, recalls a “star-studded” concert in the early 1970s to raise money for Labor Today, where Peggy joined Studs Terkel and Pete Seeger on stage.

Marshall recalls, “Peggy had this big white artists’ pad. She would do several drawings at a time, rip them off the pad and throw them on the floor. Those became treasures around town framed in people’s homes and offices today.”

Lipschutz has this advice for young people who want to combine arts with social struggles: “The thing is not to give up. Keep working.”

“Your target is short-term changes but in the long term it has to be about putting more love into the world, making it more human, with more peace.”

Susan Webb (suewebb@pww.org) is a member of the World’s editorial board.