People Before Profit blog

Autoworkers confront globalization

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 06:59:00 +0000

Autoworkers face one of their biggest challenges ever: how to fight in an era of globalization when companies threaten to move ever more production abroad to get the lowest wages and benefits possible.

With contracts for Daimler Chrysler, Ford and General Motors expiring this September, delegates at a United Auto Workers special convention in Detroit this week are working to develop a unified approach. A big concern is resisting the auto companies’ efforts to drive down wages and benefits. It is becoming increasingly evident that giving in offers no guarantee of keeping jobs but does guarantee that the race to the bottom gets faster and faster.

Yes, the Big Three are facing market challenges here in the U.S., but while closing plants at home, all three have embarked on a global splurge to build plants abroad. GM has manufacturing operations in 32 countries. GM and its main supplier Delphi have both opened major new facilities in recent years in Mexico, Eastern Europe, China and other Asian countries.

And while Ford, Daimler Chrysler and GM battle Toyota and others for market share here, the global trend is increasing interconnection and interdependence among auto companies.

GM and Toyota have a 23-year joint venture in Fremont, Calif. — New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. — building the Pontiac Vibe, Toyota Tacoma pickup and Toyota Corolla.

Ford and Mazda have a joint venture. GM Renault and Nissan jointly make commercial vans. Chrysler is slated to make minivans for Volkswagen. VW supplies diesel engines for Dodge. Ford is scheduled to make a minicar for Fiat in Europe. GM, Isuzu and Suzuki have a joint venture. And Daimler Chrysler, Mitsubishi and Hyundai developed a 4-cylinder engine to be made in Michigan.

These alliances, while making it possible to share production and downsize, also enable the companies to open more and more nonunion plants, while closing those that are unionized.

Free trade agreements have not brought economic security to workers of any country. Instead, the agreements promote competition among workers and weaken and cheapen labor worldwide. They do this in part by facilitating capital’s ability to move in and out of countries, and thus to whipsaw workers against each other in the infamous race to the bottom. In an era of globalization when operations can move from country to country, companies pit plants in the U.S. against plants in countries where wages and benefits are low. Auto companies are taking profits from one country, investing in another and claiming profit losses to gain more concessions.

GM claims it needs concessions from the union because “accounting gaffes” show profits less than expected — even as it reported a fourth-quarter profit of $950 million and anticipated “improved earnings” in 2007. Meanwhile it is opening billion-dollar plants around the world, including a big Opel plant in Slovakia and new facilities in China.

Daimler Chrysler too is saying that concessions are needed, but its net income in 2006 rose to $4.3 billion from $3.8 billion the previous year.

What can autoworkers do to fight back? The recent push by the UAW leadership to meet with autoworker unions of other countries is a positive development. The UAW recently hosted representatives of the Japanese autoworkers in Detroit and has meetings planned with autoworkers in Thailand, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, Argentina and Brazil. It should also seek to meet with China’s autoworkers. As auto production has become global, so too must the union movement.

Autoworkers also have to demand action in Washington. The problems faced by autoworkers and their union require national government solutions. Health care cannot be bargained away without a national health plan in place guaranteeing universal affordable coverage. Corporations cannot be allowed to plead losses in the U.S. without looking at their worldwide profitability. Communities that are losing funds for schools and services need emergency funding. Money must be made available for health care, housing and job retraining among other things. All options including nationalization under public and union control must be considered to keep the plants open. When led by competent managers and run democratically, plants run for the public good can perform better than those managed privately.

While the industry is changing and becoming global, auto production is still a big factor in the U.S. However, it is becoming more nonunion. Organizing Toyota and others will not be easy, but passing the Employee Free Choice Act will be a big first step. Most important, the union will have to mobilize its membership and lead a fight against concessions. It may not be able win on everything but if it doesn’t fight, it will have a hard time winning the confidence of all autoworkers, union and nonunion.

John Rummel (jrummel@cpusa.org) is Michigan state organizer of the Communist Party USA.

There are no rights without organization

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 06:57:00 +0000

The Portland (Maine) Press Herald in a recent editorial claims that the “Employee Free Choice Act opens the door to coercion.” The act, recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, with the support of Maine’s two congressmen, isn’t about coercion. It is about workers’ rights.

Article 20 of the United Nations 1948 Declaration of Human Rights states that: “Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.” This right is explained in the UN’s International Labor Organization Convention No. 87, “Freedom of Association and the Right to Organize,” which establishes the right of all workers to form and join organizations of their own choosing without prior authorization. Freedom of association is also promised under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

However, it doesn’t matter what’s in the Declaration of Human Rights or the U.S. Constitution because there are no rights without organization. Freedom of association does not exist in a vacuum. If we are to exercise freedom of association as workers, either the power of the government or the power of the unions must protect our rights.

For example, during World War I, the federal government went into the workplace and held elections for worker representatives to sit on government-recognized Works Councils. The government assumed that if workers didn’t have the organization to bargain collectively, they didn’t have any rights. So the government guaranteed that workers would be organized and represented through elected Works Councils. These councils bargained with employers and if employers dragged their heels, the Works Council appealed their grievances to the War Labor Board, which had the authority to adjudicate them.

One of the lessons of the Works Councils is that to be self-governing, people need organization. The question is: which individuals will represent us in our government — not whether we’ll have a government.

Put another way: every two years we vote for people to represent us in Congress. When we vote, we are voting to see which individuals will represent us. We do not vote to see if we want a Congress because that has long been accepted by society as a given. Everyone knows that we are voting to decide who will represent us in Congress.

Similarly, during World War I the government didn’t hold elections to see if workers wanted representation. They held elections to see who would sit on the Works Councils. The government assumed representation, and in so doing upheld the necessity of organization.

But that is not how it works in the United States today.

Under the present law if you work in an unorganized facility and think you need a union, you call a union and ask for help. An organizer comes and explains to you the benefits of belonging to a union. You are told to get people to sign union authorization cards and when enough are signed, the National Labor Relations Board will supervise an election to see if a majority of your co-workers want a union to represent them in bargaining with your employer. Early on in the election campaign process, the company almost always hires a union-busting law firm to advise it on how to keep the union out. Workers are then inundated with written propaganda, their supervisors’ verbal barrage and often firings, aimed at scaring workers so they won’t vote for the union.

When the boss tells workers, “It’s not in your best interests to join a union,” that is akin to a warden telling prisoners, “Lights out at 10.” If bosses prevent workers from organizing, they are denying them the U.S. Constitution and the UN Declaration of Human Rights, both of which hold out the promise of freedom of association.

Yes, the government should require elections for union officers, but a person’s signature is ample demonstration that they want representation.

The Employee Free Choice Act is a step in the right direction. A direction not to be denigrated but celebrated.

Peter Kellman (pkellman@psouth.net) is president of the Southern Maine Labor Council - AFL-CIO, which represents 20 local unions with a combined membership of more than 9,000 members. This article is reprinted from the Portland Press Herald with permission of the author.

Guest workers fired after protesting slave conditions

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 06:38:00 +0000

Hundreds of guest workers from India are protesting conditions in a Pascagoula, Miss., shipyard that immigrant rights activists compare to slavery.

Many of the workers gathered in a church on March 11 in this Gulf Coast port, after their employer, Signal International, threatened to send some of them home. Signal is a large corporation that repairs and services oil drilling platforms around the world.

According to Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, “they were hired in India by a labor recruiter sent by Signal. They had to pay exorbitant amounts to the company, to the recruiter and to the attorney who did the labor certification for them.”

Labor traffickers globalized

Signal brought about 300 workers from India in December to work in its Mississippi yard, and another 300 to work in two yards in Texas. The workers are part of the H2B visa program, in which the U.S. government allows companies to recruit workers outside the country and bring them here under contract. The visas are good for 10 months, but the company can renew them for those it wants to keep longer. The workers must remain employed, and if they lose their jobs, they must go home.

Workers say they were promised jobs as welders and fitters, and had to pay as much as $20,000 each to the recruiting contractor, Global Industry. Workers also say they were promised that Signal would refund the money.

“I had to pay $14,000,” says one of those workers, Joseph Jacob. “I worked for years in Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia, and I spent all the money I had to get the visa, which the recruiter promised would be a permanent residence visa. But that visa never came, and finally he said they could get us a H2B visa. That would give us 10 months of work, and if the company renewed it, we might get as much as 30 months. I thought that was the only way I’d ever be able to get back the money they’d taken.”

Signal put the Indian guest workers to work in the yard alongside U.S. workers doing the same job — welding and fitting. The company claims it pays workers from India the same wages as domestic employees. The guest workers say they were promised $18 an hour, but many were paid only half that after the company said they were unqualified. Chandler says the company recruiter in India determined the workers knew their jobs during the process of hiring them.

The new ‘company town’

Out of their wages, workers pay an additional $35 per day to stay in a labor camp Signal set up inside the yard. “The conditions are very bad here for the H2B workers,” Joseph says bitterly. “Twenty-four of us live in a room in a barracks that measures 12 feet by 18 feet, sleeping on bunk beds. There are two toilets for all of us and only four sinks. We have to get up at 3:30 in the morning, just so all of us have time to use the bathroom before going to work.”

Fired for meeting

A month ago, the Indian guest workers began meeting in a local church to discuss how they might get the company to refund the huge sums they paid to come to the U.S., and to protest the bad conditions. They organized a group, Signal H2B Workers United. It was after the company found out, they say, that it accused workers of being unqualified for their jobs and cut their pay. Eight were told they were completely incapable, and Signal announced it was sending them back to India immediately. Joseph was fired. “I am now terminated because I attended the meeting,” he says. “That’s what the company vice-president told me.”

Signal International President Dick Marler told the Mississippi Press that although workers had been employed since December, the company only discovered recently that they had no skills. Federal law required the company to fire them, he asserted.

Signal did not return calls for this story, but a statement on the company web site says the workers “receive the same pay and are taxed the same as all other Signal craft personnel. Workers from India have a reputation for being pleasant and hard-working.” It quotes Marler, who says, “We are fortunate the U.S. government has such a program that allows us to supplement our workforce during a time of emergency created by hurricanes.”

Deportations, company lock-up

When the company announced the terminations, one worker disappeared. Another, Sabu Lal, slashed his wrists and was taken to the Singing River Hospital in Pascagoula. He told the Mississippi Press that dying would be better than being sent home.

“Lal and I are from the same place in India,” Joseph explains. “I knew he had sold his home, and had no place to return to. He was only able to make back a small part of the thousands of dollars he paid to the recruiter, and he said he couldn’t go home like that.”

Company security guards locked the fired workers in what they call the TV room, and wouldn’t let them leave.

Their co-workers contacted the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, which went to the Pascagoula Police Department. The police went out to the yard and eventually freed the imprisoned workers. Outside the yard, dozens of workers and activists denounced the firings and mistreatment.

DANGER: Guest worker programs

“We’ve learned about case after case of workers in Mississippi, Louisiana and all along the gulf in these conditions,” Chandler says. “There are thousands of guest workers who have been brought in since Katrina and subjected to this same treatment. Mexican guest workers in Amelia, La., were held in the same way. They also got organized, and came to Pascagoula to support the workers here when they heard what happened.”

According to Chandler, Signal imported hundreds of workers from Peru a year ago, and after sending them home, brought the present group of guest workers from India to replace them. He says the experience of these workers highlights the problems inherent in proposals introduced into Congress over the last two years, which would set up similar schemes for the importation of as many as 400,000 guest workers per year.

“Organizations that are fighting for the rights of workers and advocating on behalf of workers should be totally opposed to these kind of programs,” he says. “The conditions that people work in here are so exploitative they’re worse than the conditions for even undocumented workers.”

The Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance and the Southern Poverty Law Center plan to go to court to stop the deportations. Meanwhile, workers say they are determined to continue challenging the company until the money they paid the contractor is returned to them.

David Bacon, labor journalist and photographer, is the author of “The Children of NAFTA” and “Communities Without Borders,” a photodocumentary on transnational communities.

Hundreds rally for jailed New Bedford workers

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 06:05:00 +0000

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Hundreds of people from Massachusetts and Rhode Island rallied here March 17 in support of 361 undocumented workers who were arrested in a government raid earlier this month at a New Bedford garment factory.

Organized under the slogan, “Where is my mother?” the event highlighted the plight of the workers’ families.

Some participants came from as far away as western Massachusetts, traveling for up to three hours through snow and ice left over from a storm the day before. The rally site was shifted from the city’s federal building to indoors at the New Bedford Vocational High School because of the blizzard.

The program opened with prayers from a Mayan elder identified as Grandfather Nicholas and the Rev. Richard Wilson of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish at St. James Church. Grandfather Nicholas’ prayer called for peace for “all the inhabitants of this earth.” In his prayer, Father Wilson noted that “people of all faiths and nonbelievers” have rallied around the cause of the undocumented immigrants and their families.

The prayers were followed by the assembly’s chanting of “The people united will never be defeated” in Spanish and the playing of the Chilean song of the same name, which served as the anthem of Chile’s left-wing Popular Unity government in the early 1970s.

Corinn Williams, head of the Community Economic Development Center, recapped the events of March 6, the day of the raid, although she was heckled for a time by a member of the audience. The heckler was removed by the police when rally participants started chanting, drowning out her shouts.

Williams called on those present to give humanitarian aid, whether it be in the form of time or money, or to “just make phone calls” in support of the affected families. Referring to the raids, she said, “This can be stopped if only our president and Congress would just fix our immigration system.”

The crowd was visibly moved as a woman with small children described her situation after her husband was arrested at the Michael Bianco, Inc., factory. She was followed by another immigrant, identified only as José. He said his wife was jailed in Texas after being arrested in New Bedford. José called on the press to continue reporting on the plight of the families of the detained.

Howard Maery from Fall River spoke for United Interfaith Action, a coalition of religious institutions in the area. He called on the people to “work together for a policy that promotes justice and protects the powerless” as the basis for immigration reform.

Also speaking was Juan García of the Immigrants in Action Committee at St. Teresa’s Church in Providence, R.I. García had just returned from Guatemala, where he took part in protests against President Bush during his Latin American tour. During the tour, Bush tried to bolster the image of the U.S. in the region, where a popular upsurge has elected several progressive, left-oriented governments in recent years.

Speaking on behalf of organized labor, José A. Soler, director of the Labor Education Center at the University of Massachusetts-North Dartmouth, put forth the position of the AFL-CIO on immigration reform. Soler, who is also a leader of the local central labor council, noted, “The women and men that were working in the factory that was raided were working under deplorable conditions, yet apart from some fleeting statements, the federal government has paid absolutely no attention to that.”

He ironically remarked that the workers were being punished for being exploited.

Interrupted a number of times with applause during his presentation, Soler criticized the Bush administration’s call for a guest worker program and called for new immigration reform “with laws that focus on worker rights, not just providing employers with a steady stream of workers that have no rights, that are exploitable through temporary worker programs.”

jacruz @ pww.org

Union: Sago miners did not have to die

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 06:02:00 +0000

Standing with the West Virginia congressional delegation and before the family of deceased Sago miner Jim Bennett, United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts and Secretary Treasurer Daniel Kane charged, “This tragedy was preventable and should have never occurred.” Directly challenging two state investigations and another by International Coal Group (ICG), owner of the Sago mine where 12 miners died while at work underground in January 2006, the union leaders demanded immediate action to protect the lives of thousands of coal miners, union and nonunion.

“Twelve men are dead today who should not be,” said Roberts. “Their deaths came as a result of a series of bad decisions made by the company and the federal mine safety regulatory agency [the Mine Safety and Health Administration, MSHA].”

Some of these decisions were made in the weeks and months just before the explosion and in the hours immediately after it, Roberts said, while some had been made many years earlier. But “all of these misguided decisions contributed to this tragedy,” he said. “And without immediate action by mine operators and regulatory agencies to reverse the effects of these decisions, more tragedies are inevitable.”

Company and state investigations into the Sago disaster concluded that lightning — an “act of God” — caused the explosion. But the union’s highly skilled investigators found no evidence to support that conclusion.

No metal conduit was present at the mine that could have conducted electricity from a lightning strike into a sealed area, an underground section containing volatile methane gas, said the union’s report. Union investigators said evidence did show as the most likely cause “frictional activity from the mine roof.” Such friction “created an electrical arc underground that ignited an explosive methane-air mixture in the sealed area.”

Miners at Sago are not members of the United Mine Workers union.

According to MSHA records, during the six months before the fatal blast, ICG was cited for 180 safety violations, including 12 roof falls that pointed to structural instability.

Roberts zeroed in on ICG’s operating Sago on the cheap and cutting corners on safety laws, as well as the federal government’s relaxation of standards and the sloppy or nonexistent enforcement of state and federal regulations.

In the 1990s, MSHA changed the 1977 Mine Health and Safety Act to allow coal companies to exchange effective “bulkhead seals” used for sealing off abandoned sections of the mine for “Omega block seals” made of foam and fiber. The Omega block seals used by ICG failed, allowing toxic gases to fill the mine.

“The real problem here is that the will and intent of Congress when it passed the Coal Act in 1969 and the Mine Act in 1977 has been diluted, modified and subverted by MSHA and mine operators to the point where some practices and policies in place today offer miners little more protection than they had before those laws were passed,” Roberts said.

The report calls for action ranging from seals to ventilation, miners’ emergency breathing apparatus, rescue teams and dozens more. On the heels of the UMWA report, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Labor and Education Committee, shot off another letter to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao demanding that coal companies be required to install rescue chambers underground. Many countries, including Canada, require such chambers.

With demands for electricity growing, coal companies are making handsome profits. Through the first week of 2007, miners in northern West Virginia, where Sago is located, extracted nearly a million tons of coal worth $44.3 million, exceeding tonnage and profits in the same area during the record-setting year 2006.

dwinebr696 @ aol.com

Continuing Crystal Eastmans work

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 07:23:00 +0000

Workers Memorial Day is a day to remember those who have been injured or died on the job, and to renew the fight for safe workplaces. This year the Allegheny County Labor Council, in Pittsburgh, Pa., will observe Workers Memorial Day on April 30 at noon in Market Square.

The ceremony will also commemorate the 100th anniversary of The Pittsburgh Survey (1907-1908), the pioneering work of Crystal Eastman and others who investigated the horrendous living conditions of Pittsburgh’s working class.

Pioneering woman, pioneering work

Eastman, a founder of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, came to Pittsburgh 100 years ago and began an investigation of labor conditions. Her report, Work Accidents and the Law, cataloged 526 workplace deaths that occurred in only one year in Allegheny County and highlighted the inadequacy of worker protection and compensation.

This report was one of a six-volume series that is known collectively as The Pittsburgh Survey, which examined life and labor in America’s fifth largest city at the time, and home to a massive exploited immigrant labor force.

The progressive reforms this series called for were hindered by the oppressive power of Pittsburgh’s industrialists and its political machine. Unfortunately, 100 years later in 2007, workers still face many obstacles to achieving a safe workplace.

Bush’s horrendous record

The Bush administration, acting on behalf of corporate interests, has rolled back and weakened existing worker protections. It has the worst record on safety rules in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s entire history, issuing no new significant rules during its first term.

In 2006, the number of coal mine deaths doubled, with 47 coal miners killed on the job. After withdrawing dozens of needed safety rules under development in 2001, the Bush administration is now being compelled to issue stronger mine safety protections.

Yet, since Bush took office, there have been repeated attempts to slash funding for OSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. OSHA’s budget has been cut by $25.4 million since 2001.

OSHA lacks the resources to protect the 100 million workers under its jurisdiction. With its only 900 inspectors, it would take 110 years for OSHA to visit every worksite under its jurisdiction. The number of hours spent per OSHA inspection continues to decrease, and the number of cases “downgraded” to less serious violations is rising. Penalties for serious violations remain low and are routinely reduced through a process called abatement.

The killing of a worker through the “willful” violation of a safety law is a misdemeanor, with a maximum sentence of six months in jail. In the 20 years between 1982 and 2002, only 1,700 out of 170,000 workplace fatalities were deemed “willful.” OSHA declined to seek prosecution in 93 percent of these 1,700 “willful” violations and less than 20 of these “willful” violators were ever imprisoned.

Millions injured, thousands die

Each year, approximately 4.2 million workers are injured, over 5,000 are killed and another 50,000 die due to occupational exposure. American workers need a strong OSHA and MSHA that puts workers, not employers, first and protects health and safety, not corporate interests.

Eastman’s pioneering work was an important landmark in this ongoing struggle for workplace health and safety. Workers Memorial Day 2007 in Pittsburgh will celebrate her important contribution, honor those who have lost their lives while on the job, and promote the health and safety of all workers.

Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, whose leadership saw the enactment of the Westray Bill of the Criminal Code of Canada, which holds corporations criminally liable when workers are killed or injured, will be the keynote speaker. The Allegheny County Bell, symbolic of a worker whose untimely death may have saved many, will be struck to remember those who have died due to unsafe working conditions this past year in western Pennsylvania.

Dr. Donna Puleio Spadaro is on the Allegheny County Labor Council Workers’ Memorial Day Committee. Her brother, Gary Puleio, fell 25 feet from a concrete tower and was killed on Aug. 15, 2001. After admitting no wrongdoing, the company, which had informally settled multiple serious violations only months before Puleio was killed, paid a $6,000 fine.

Unions: Enough talk, time for action on health care

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 07:16:00 +0000

The AFL-CIO Executive council voted unanimously at its March 6 meeting in Las Vegas to endorse universal national health care coverage for all Americans under a plan in which government plays a central role in regulating, financing and providing that care.

The move by leaders of some of the nation’s biggest unions, ranging from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union (AFSCME) on the one hand to the building trades on the other, is unprecedented in the history of the U.S. labor movement.

Under the union backed plan, the government, as the administrator, would act as it does now with Medicare to bargain prices down, in contrast to the current health care system which has driven costs up for the insured while leaving 47 million uninsured and many millions more under-insured.

The move by the AFL-CIO comes as companies across the U.S. are dropping health care for workers and as many other companies are trying to force their employees to pay ever larger percentages of their health care costs.

The move also comes at a time when the American people are expressing their readiness for radical overhaul of the nation’s health care system In a New York Times/CBS poll last week, clear majorities indicated backing for national, government-run health insurance and even expressed willingness to pay higher taxes for it.

“The time for talking about this crisis is past,” the resolution said, adding “all families deserve the security of a universal health care system that guarantees access based on need rather than on income. Health care is a fundamental human right.”

Gerald Shea, AFL-CIO health care policy specialist, said the resolution was “designed to address the major shortcomings in our current health care system. Careful consideration was given to come up with a plan that would cover the largest possible number of people, and in order to cut costs, have the government play the leading role.”

He cited Medicare, “in which the government provides coverage paid for out of payroll taxes,” and said, “We can build on this by taking Medicare benefits and by updating and expanding them so that they fit the needs of the whole working [age] population and children. Under this plan the government would negotiate prices with physicians and providers that are affordable.”

Also at its March 6 meeting the AFL-CIO Executive Council rebuked President Bush for including in his recent health care proposals a plan to tax what the president called “gold plated health insurance enjoyed by many in this country.”

“Until comprehensive national reform is enacted, we will continue to defend health benefits workers have fought and sacrificed to establish over the last 50 years,” the AFL-CIO said.

“The Bush plan,” Shea said, “would be used as an excuse by companies to dump any decent health care plans that they might now have.”

The Council also rejected new mandatory insurance schemes. “Universal health care does not mean mandating that everyone must buy a health insurance policy and then handing them the bills,” the statement said.

The Executive Council did not endorse a specific bill that would overhaul the nation’s health care system. Shea said, however, that HR 676, a bill sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), would “more than accomplish what the unions want.” The Conyers bill provides for a single payer, government-run health care system.

Shea also praised other bills pending in the House and Senate.

But, said Kay Tillow, communications director for the Nurses Professional Organization/All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care, “those other bills would extend Medicare to the whole country, but still leave a role for private insurers.”

Her group has been instrumental in winning support for the HR 676 Conyers bill by numerous unions including the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the United Steel Workers, the Plumbers and the Pipefitters. More than 200 other union groups including the Wisconsin AFL-CIO now back the Conyers bill.

Tillow described the AFL-CIO initiative on universal health care as “a big advance over the present health care system,” but said private insurers should be eliminated since they drive up costs.

She explained why private health insurers must be eliminated, as they are in the Conyers bill. “The profits made by private insurers amount to $300 billion annually. If you eliminate them, you have that much more money to do what has to be done.

“The second reason for eliminating private insurers,” she said, “is that they interfere with care. They stipulate types of care, medications, therapies, and time limits they have no business stipulating. They make decisions that should be made by doctors and their patients.”

thewritergdr @ europe.com

Public fury on jailing of garment workers: Govt raids traumatize families

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 06:12:00 +0000

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Shock and anger swept through Massachusetts after agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided Michael Bianco, Inc., on March 6, arresting 361 undocumented workers, mostly mothers, and leaving hundreds of children traumatized.

Activists and immigrant rights groups immediately called on the governor and the state’s congressional delegation to intervene so that families would not be separated. Churches, political and civic organizations, as well as the press took up that cry.

Calling the raid “a humanitarian crisis,” Gov. Deval Patrick blasted the Department of Homeland Security after news surfaced that immigration officials sent planeloads of those arrested to detention centers in Texas, Florida and other places, far from their families. Patrick, who met with detainees and their families, slammed ICE for splitting up families with no concern for their children.

Days after the raid U.S. District Court Judge Richard Stearns ordered ICE to stop sending the detained workers out of state. Lawyers for those arrested argued that the Massachusetts federal court district has jurisdiction over all the workers detained regardless of where ICE has transferred them. Harvey Kaplan, one of the lawyers representing the workers and their families, said, “The immigration authorities already conceded that they had spirited away people who should have remained in this jurisdiction. ICE acted in bad faith, and this federal district needs to get all our people back here to Massachusetts.”

After meeting with those workers released and the families of others still detained, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Michael Chertoff, head of the Department of Homeland Security, demanding that everyone arrested be returned to Massachusetts. Kennedy also demanded that names of the arrested and their whereabouts be made public so that families can get in contact with them.

Teodora Tejeda, whose father was a U.S. war veteran, said the ICE agents were abusive. She said agents yelled at people if they talked to one another. Tejeda and others had to ask repeatedly before they were allowed to use the bathroom. Tejeda was taken to Fort Devens, a former U.S. Army base 90 miles away. “They finally gave us something to eat — a sandwich and water,” she said.

Tejeda, from Honduras, said that most of the people arrested were from Central America, but that Brazilian, Portuguese and Cambodian workers were also taken. Workers from Ecuador and Poland were also detained.

“People came rushing in towards my area,” said Norma Urbino. “They told us to shut the machines and to stay calm. I thought there was a fire,” said Urbino, who worked at the far end of the factory. “We were glued to our seats because there was nowhere to go. The company kept all the doors locked.”

Urbino, also from Honduras, was one of many mothers arrested. She was one of the lucky few released that afternoon along with pregnant women and minors working at the factory. “I told them I have little children and no one to care for them,” she said.

Irma Moreno, a mother with permanent residency status, held her three-month-old baby and told this reporter, “I don’t know where my husband is. They held him in Rhode Island, now they’ve taken him someplace else.” Moreno said the Rhode Island detention center confirmed her husband was moved but had no information where. Others are in the same predicament.

One man, with tears in his eyes, was trying to get information about his son who just turned 18 and is being held in Texas. The man’s daughter was also arrested and taken to the Bristol County jail where reportedly 90 to 100 workers are detained. Because this father is himself undocumented, he is afraid to call the authorities about his children’s whereabouts.

Many are denouncing the Bush administration for the recent nationwide increase in immigration raids. María Elena Letona, of Centro Presente in Cambridge, said at a press conference after the raids that there have been “13,000 arrests in the last nine months.”

A letter from 120 community, labor and church leaders as well as public officials was presented to Bruce Chadbourne, ICE district director in Boston, demanding “the immediate release of all workers detained,” with full access to legal representation, and “a moratorium on the raids.”

Gov. Patrick set up a toll-free hotline number so that families can try to find their loved ones. One mother, a sole provider, was released after her seven-year-old child called the number to report her missing from home.

State Sen. Jarrett Barrios, a Cuban American, told the World a relief effort was being set up to provide financial help, food and clothing for the families. The effort through the MIRA Coalition plans on raising $250,000, none of which will be used for overhead of MIRA or the agencies helping the traumatized families. “Tell your readers to go to www.miracoalition.org to help,” Barrios said.

jacruz @ pww.org. Elsa Maldonado contributed to this story.

Union Organizing Can Be Deadly in Colombia

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 16:15:00 +0000

Bogotá, Colombia (AP) - More than 800 trade unionists have been killed in Colombia over the past six years, by government count, yet the number of those murders solved can be counted on one hand.

Union organizing can be a deadly activity anywhere but is particularly dangerous in Colombia, where decades of political violence and lawlessness compel some unscrupulous employers to hire assassins.

“There’s almost total impunity,” claims Flavio Arias, vice president of the CUT labor umbrella organization, which represents Colombia’s 530,000 unionized workers.

Now Colombia’s reputation as the deadliest place in the world to be a labor organizer threatens to sink one of President Alvaro Uribe’s proudest achievements: a free trade agreement with U.S. President George W. Bush, who is expected to use his visit to Colombia on March 11 to press for congressional approval.

The union-friendly Democrats who now control the U.S. Congress are so concerned about the unsolved labor murders that they are threatening to derail the trade pact entirely unless Uribe makes clear progress.

In a speech last May Day - the international day of the worker - Uribe boasted of “working with complete devotion so that one day we can stand before the world and say not a single trade unionist has been killed in Colombia.”

Yet the number of slain unionists rose last year even as the homicide rate dropped under Uribe’s law-and-order government. The Labor Ministry says 43 trade unionists were killed in 2005, and 58 last year.

None of those murders have been solved.

“Colombia’s labor record is one of most problematic and controversial of any countries to sign a free trade agreement,” said Thea Lee, policy director of the AFL-CIO, in Washington, D.C.

The biggest threat is hitmen hired by employers, especially in parts of the country where many workers toil in semi-feudal conditions and illegal militias hold sway.

That is the allegation in the 2001 murders of three mining union leaders murdered in 2001 in a case involving a U.S. coal company’s Colombian arm. A federal judge in Alabama on Monday, March 5, ruled that a civil suit could go to trial against Birmingham-based Drummond Co. Inc., whose local president is alleged to have played a role in the killings.

The suit says two union leaders were taken off a Drummond bus and shot to death by assassins hired by the company while a replacement union leader was also gunned down by paramilitaries.

Colombia’s union membership rate, at about 5 percent, is one of Latin America’s lowest and the chief federal prosecutor’s office has a backlog of 1,300 cases of murders, threats and intimidation involving trade unionists.

“It’s an embarrassment how slow we’ve been to take on these cases,” said the chief of the office’s human rights division, Leonardo Cabana. He’s got just 13 prosecutors nationwide tackling the labor caseload.

Among the victims is Jorge Abril Parra, who was shot twice in the head last year on his way to work at “Tapas La Libertad,” a metal caps and bottling plant owned by one of Colombia’s biggest conglomerates.

Parra had survived a previous murder attempt but the company ignored requests from the Sintraime metal workers’ union that he be transferred, said union president Felix Herrera.

A few months after Parra’s murder, 25 frightened co-workers - all union members - accepted a company retirement offer.

Although there is no evidence linking Parra’s employer to his murder, Herrera said “there’s no doubt the company took advantage of his death to defeat the union.” A spokeswoman for Tapas La Libertad did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.

Often, the hostility toward unions comes from the top.

Jorge Sanchez, the vice minister of labor, told The Associated Press that unions inflate the numbers of slain members “because they thrive on violence and blood.”

Protecting labor leaders does appear to be a government priority, however. Guarding them - with bulletproof vests or bodyguards - consumes 40 percent of a nearly $20 million security program for human rights activists, journalists and other threatened individuals.

But labor unions, and their Democratic allies, demand more.

“Countless numbers of trade unionists in Colombia have been intimidated, have been threatened and have been murdered,” said Rep. James McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat who visited Colombia last week.

“Until those issues are addressed, I think there’s going to be some rough sledding for the trade agreement.”

Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, the powerful new chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, would not back the trade deal despite a lobbying trip by Uribe in November.

Nor would Rep. Gregory Meeks, also of New York: “I don’t think the free trade deal with Colombia will be approved in its current form.”

George Becker, former Steelworkers President

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 10:31:00 +0000

George Becker, 78, former president of the United Steelworkers (USW), died Feb. 3 at his home in West Deer, Pa. Twice elected USW president, Becker served from 1993-2000, taking him through some of the most intense union battles of the late 20th century in the United States.

Becker followed his father into the Granite City Steel Mill, near St. Louis, at the tender age of 15, joining a labor gang on the open hearth. “He told me that when you were on his front porch you could feel the heat from the mill,” said current USW President Leo Gerard.

Becker enlisted in the Marines near the end of World War II and was drafted into the Army during the Korean War.

A champion of workers’ safety, Becker led a tough struggle to protect workers at Dow Chemical when that company tried to save money by cutting off systems to protect workers from lead poisoning and arsenic exposure. He wrote the lead standard adopted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), under which workers must be removed from exposure with no loss in pay, and not returned until safe blood lead levels are reached.

Becker brought the Steelworkers into the front lines of union struggles, mobilizing rank and file workers as part of the new Rapid Response network he created to involve steelworkers, families and allies in the difficult legislative struggles of the period.

A real union fighter, Becker was assigned to lead the Steelworkers’ fight during the 1986-87 USX lockout. Breaking new ground, Becker set up rank and file union teams to bring pressure on Marathon and other non-steel USX holdings. The USW’s broad solidarity effort won gains in pensions, health care and contracting out.

Becker’s historic impact on our nation’s labor movement was assured in 1990, as he developed the international campaign in solidarity with 1,700 striking aluminum workers in Ravenswood, W.Va. Ravenswood Aluminum Corp., led by international criminal financier Marc Rich, fired the union workers and brought in scabs. Becker, applying lessons learned during the USX and other union fights, developed flying squads of steelworkers. They followed Rich across Europe, Australia and Latin America, mobilizing labor and allied support that proved crucial in winning the Ravenswood fight. In doing so, Becker broke down the decades-old Cold War barriers that had stopped U.S. unions from working with left-led unions across the globe. The USW won the Ravenswood battle, and Marc Rich remained on the run until given a last-minute pardon by then-President Clinton.

Soon after becoming USW President, Becker faced another crisis. The Rubber Workers union (URW) was being broken by Bridgestone Corp., threatening a major defeat for all of labor. Becker engineered a merger between URW and USW, taking on the Bridgestone-Firestone fight. The USW mobilized its membership in a national and international solidarity drive that won a decent contract for the rubber workers.

These struggles helped inspire the entire U.S. labor movement in the need for a more class-struggle-oriented leadership, leading to the watershed victory of John Sweeney/Linda Chavez-Thompson in AFL-CIO elections. Becker played a crucial organizing role in this historic step forward for the U.S. labor movement.

Becker set up the Stand Up For Steel movement and played an important role in the struggle against NAFTA, GATT and FTAA. “The thing that George did better than anyone was being the voice of the anxious industrial worker on the loss of jobs and foreign trade,” said Leo Gerard.

George Becker strengthened the USW, and in the process helped bring class struggle, fighting unionism back to the entire U.S. labor movement. His struggles have brought hope to us all. He will be sorely missed.

Becker is survived by his wife, Jane, three sons, a sister, 10 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

If Sago happened today, loved ones would still die

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 09:01:00 +0000

“Coal is more important than life.” That is how Pam Campbell, sister-in-law of miner Marty Bennett who died inside Sago Mine, sums up over a year of government and coal corporation stalls, speeches, secrecy and frustration. More than a year after Sago exploded in January 2006, killing 12 West Virginia miners, the country’s 2,100 coal mines are no safer.

Last year was a great year for coal corporations like Sago’s owner, International Coal Group (ICG). The National Mining Association (NMA), a consortium of mining companies, says coal miners produced 1.16 billion tons of coal worth an estimated $55.6 billion. That is more than the gross domestic product of the United Arab Emirates, an oil producing country. The NMA predicts 2007 will be another banner year, with miners expected to produce 1.17 billion tons of coal worth an estimated $56.16 billion.

Last year, on average, the nation’s 100,000 miners produced 11,600 tons of coal per worker or $561,000 per person for the coal companies. Companies, union and non-union, pay miners an average of $50,000 per year. Coal continues to be the fuel of choice for producing electricity in the U.S., accounting for 50.5 percent. Despite global warming and efforts by scientists, the NMA expects coal devoted to electricity to grow by 1.5 percent in 2007.

While coal operators count their profits, coal miners and their communities are struggling. In 2006, says the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), 47 miners went to work and never returned home to their families. Thirty-seven miners died underground and another 10 miners were killed at surface strip mine operations. In the first two months of 2007, three miners have died at work.

Over a year after Sago, both the West Virginia Legislature and Congress have enacted mine safety legislation, but little has changed on the job. Sago families told the Charleston Gazette in December that if Sago happened today, their family members would still die. MSHA is hiring more mine inspectors. Coal operators, though, have blocked even the least of safety reforms — the requirement that accidents be reported to MSHA within 15 days of their occurrence.

Safety devices and workplace improvements that cost coal operators money are years in the future, if at all. For example, there is no legal deadline to install improved communications to locate miners in distress. In fact, West Virginia’s Office of Miners’ Health Safety and Training does not require mine owners to submit plans for wireless devices until August 2007 and purchase orders will be accepted to prove compliance with installation. Neither federal nor state law sets deadlines for coal mine owners to provide life-or-death breathing equipment, self-contained self-rescuers (SCSRs). Here, too, company purchase orders are proof of compliance. While it is estimated that 35,000 to 100,000 SCSRs are needed, coal companies claim there is a long waiting list, with first deliveries from the nation’s largest manufacturer of SCSRs, CSE Corp., not expected until late 2007.

There are no new SCSRs in the mines. But Draeger, another manufacturer of breathing devices, told the Charleston Gazette that more than 6,500 units are stored in their warehouse near the Pittsburgh airport. “We haven’t had that many orders,” said Wes Kenneweg, president of the company’s North American operations.

Despite overwhelming evidence from other countries including Canada that underground rescue chambers save miners’ lives, Congress only mandated a study on their effectiveness with a report due next December. Congress ordered coal companies to provide additional mine rescue teams but then granted MSHA until the end of 2007 just to write additional regulations governing the teams. Meanwhile, West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin backed away from a promise to close unsafe mines until owners corrected safety violations.

The Sago families remain true to their promise to stick with this fight. “We basically continue to fight for what we think needs to be done for the rest of these coal miners,” said Pam Campbell.

dwinebr696 @ aol.com

Labor sends a statement in Chicago

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 07:28:00 +0000

“We sent a statement,” declared Dennis Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL), in the afterglow of the Feb. 27 municipal elections. And what a statement it was.

Organized labor and its community allies made history by helping elect two candidates against Democratic Party machine incumbents and forcing 12 other runoffs on April 17. Runoffs occur when no candidate cracks 50 percent.

No labor-endorsed incumbents were defeated. Aldermen Freddrenna Lyle and Ricardo Munoz, who led the fight for the big box living wage ordinance, won outright. Ald. Joe Moore was barely forced into a runoff.

This was the latest arena in an increasingly bitter clash pitting organized labor and its allies against the city’s big business, financial and real estate interests and giant transnational corporations like Wal-Mart and Target.

Not since the days of the late Mayor Harold Washington has organized labor been so active in municipal elections. It was an unprecedented step for the CFL to organize its own independent political apparatus and deny Mayor Richard M. Daley an endorsement.

The bold electoral offensive resulted from an accumulation of grievances by labor and its community allies against the Daley administration. “It’s not just big box-living wage or right-to-know [legislation for striking hotel workers]. It’s not just about the city contract where we waited 28 months and retirees didn’t get back paychecks. It’s not just about charter schools for teachers, privatization of city services or the layoffs. It’s a combination of all of that,” Gannon said.

In addition, anger has grown over downgrading affirmative action in minority contracts and hiring as well as the crisis in affordable housing caused by gentrification. Large-scale developments are occurring downtown while working-class neighborhoods are neglected.

The Chamber of Commerce and Illinois Retail Merchants Association countered labor’s plans by supporting pro-Daley candidates to guarantee that “one stop shopping” with the mayor would continue and the big box ordinance wouldn’t be reintroduced.

Big business sources lavishly funded the campaigns of friendly incumbents, including a last minute $130,000 from Wal-Mart and Target. More big corporate money was funneled to Daley, who accumulated a $5 million war chest.

Daley’s election to a fifth term was bittersweet. He won by the lowest vote of his tenure. The absence of serious competition kept the anti-Daley vote largely at home. Additionally, he lost council allies and will have to contend with a significant block of independent aldermen.

Daley was hamstrung by allegations of corruption, including the indictment and conviction of his patronage chief. This prevented him from mobilizing an army of patronage hires in support of his aldermen.

Into this vacuum stepped labor and its allies. The CFL, with the Service Employees Union (SEIU) leading the charge, targeted anti-labor incumbents. Labor poured over $2 million into the races and marshaled some 2,000 members to conduct neighborhood labor walks and phone-bank members. Top labor officers set the example by working directly in the campaigns.

In an unprecedented development, three trade unionists ran for office and made the runoffs: Leroy Jones, a shop steward with SEIU Local 73; JoAnn Thompson, a public worker and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees member; and Toni Foulkes, a grocery store worker, United Food and Commercial Workers member and leader of ACORN. If elected April 17 they will join former Laborer Patrick Levar, who was re-elected.

The machine took a huge hit when Sandi Jackson, wife of U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., defeated Darcel Beavers and the powerful ward organization of her father, William Beavers. Also Brendan O’Reilly, a former aide to Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, defeated Burt Natarus, backed by developers. Jackson and O’Reilly were strongly supported by labor.

Daley still has the $5 million to dispense to candidates in the April 17 battle royal. But labor pledges it will match its first-round efforts to elect aldermen who will stand up for living wages, affordable housing, mass transit funding and education and oppose privatization.

jbachtell @ cpusa.org

Labor moves to offense

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 07:10:00 +0000

Free Choice Act victory lays out bolder agenda on trade, health care and worker solidarity

LAS VEGAS — The main focus of this week’s AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting was moving forward from the March 1 passage of HR 800, the Employee Free Choice Act, in the U.S. House of Representatives, federation President John Sweeney told reporters here.

But it was hard to ignore the impact on labor’s agenda of what Sweeney called “a turning point victory.” A tidal wave of confidence and enthusiasm engendered by that 241-185 vote engulfed every point on the meeting’s agenda. One by one, the issues of organizing, politics, health care, the Iraq war, global solidarity and trade rose to the surface, steeped in a new boldness and fighting spirit.

Health care, Iraq

One unexpected development was a health care resolution, passed without dissent by the 47-member council. It called for universal coverage, with the government playing “the central role in regulating, financing and providing health care.” It singled out Medicare as a system that could be “updated and expanded to fit the needs of the working population and children.”

Some observers noted the contrast with the last meeting, in August 2006, at which federation leaders called for universal coverage but did not reach consensus on the key question of a government role. This time, pressures of the crisis coupled with confidence in labor’s ability to promote its own solution resulted in unanimity.

A resolution on Iraq moved beyond the position adopted at the federation’s 2005 convention. At that time the federation called for bringing the troops home rapidly. Now the council issued a call to Congress to insist on a timetable for disengagement.

‘Fair trade not “free” trade’

Steelworker President Leo Gerard presented the trade resolution in unvarnished class solidarity terms. Labor is not against trade, he said, but opposes “exploitive trade that pits worker against worker and country against country.”

The AFL-CIO’s trade program calls for a halt in negotiation of trade agreements until all existing pacts — NAFTA, CAFTA and those that came after — can be reviewed and evaluated for their effect on workers, jobs, communities and the environment in all countries involved.

“We need international standards so no corporation can gain advantage by violating workers’ rights,” said Gerard.

The resolution prioritizes ending the president’s “fast track” authority. Fast track allows the president to bypass Congress in negotiating trade deals.

Filibuster or veto?

The Employee Free Choice Act still faces significant hurdles: a threatened filibuster in the Senate and Bush’s firm promise of a veto. Nevertheless, AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff predicted Senate passage of the bill this year.

“There is much discomfort on Capitol Hill about some of the things being said by the Republican leadership,” Acuff explained. “When the president of the United States says he is going to do everything in his power to block a measure that will strengthen and expand the middle class,” there is pressure on moderate Republicans to get off the bandwagon. Not one of the bill’s 241 House supporters, including 13 Republicans, reneged on their commitment to the bill despite an all-out campaign by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Sweeney added that if it’s necessary to elect a new president in 2008 to enact the bill into law, “it would be done.”

2008 plans

The council unanimously adopted a process for participation in the run up to the 2008 presidential nomination. It emphasizes membership involvement, said Gerald McEntee, president of AFSCME and head of the federation’s political action committee. It will include a six-month series of events in which union members will discuss issues and where candidates will hear directly from union members.

The AFL-CIO is asking national unions to refrain from making a primary endorsement until its General Board acts in September, following an August candidates’ forum in Chicago.

Organizing and winning

The wave of popular support for workers’ rights seems to have energized organizing campaigns across the country. Acuff presented a two-page report listing dozens of “large scale” organizing campaigns that he said unions have been running and winning, mostly outside the flawed National Labor Relations Board processes which EFCA seeks to remedy.

Two of the biggest successes are the 65,000 home child care workers organized in five states by AFSCME, and 11,000 Cingular workers unionized under an employer-agreed-to card-check arrangement. EFCA advocates point to the massive Cingular campaign as an example of how the card-check process expedites the realization of worker organizing rights.

“We are ramping up our ability to organize on a greater scale and at a greater pace,” said Acuff. While many recent victories have been in public sector organizing, the federation is now focusing resources on “tough targets” in the private sector, such as Verizon Business and Verizon Wireless, he added. The Verizon campaign is based on a partnership of former rival unions CWA and IBEW.

Larry Cohen, CWA president and head of the federation’s organizing committee, said the House passage of the Employee Free Choice Act should be seen broadly, not as just a victory for unions. “It’s about working families more than about unions,” he said.

rwood @ pww.org

Workers, not guests

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 11:22:00 +0000

Ten days before Christmas, the Woodfin Suite Hotel in Emeryville, Calif., fired Luz Dominguez and 20 other housekeepers. Managers announced they’d received a letter from Social Security saying the numbers they’d given when they were originally hired didn’t match government records. The 21 housekeepers have been making beds, washing toilets and vacuuming carpets there for years. Dominguez recalls, “Before, they sometimes told us they’d received a notice about our numbers not matching. We never had to do anything about it.”

What had changed?

In 2005 an Oakland-based worker advocacy group, the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, convinced Emeryville voters to pass Measure C. The new ordinance established a $9 hourly minimum in the town’s four hotels. Housekeepers required to clean more than 5,000 square feet in an eight-hour shift now had to be paid time and a half. “Before the law was passed, we cleaned 16 suites, sometimes 17,” says Marcela Melquiades, another fired housekeeper. The new law dropped that to 10.

The four hotels — Woodfin Suite, Sheraton Four Points, Marriott and Holiday Inn — spent $115,000 to defeat the measure (garnering only 1,100 “no” votes). When they lost, they tried to get an injunction to prevent it from taking effect, and lost again. Workers began asking Woodfin to comply.

That’s when the hotel suddenly demanded new Social Security numbers. “We felt defrauded,” Dominguez says. “We’d worked really hard for them.”

No-match letters have become a form of immigration enforcement increasingly favored by the Bush administration. But they’re often used, unions charge, to retaliate against workers when they stand up for themselves.

Such workplace enforcement cost the jobs of thousands of workers last year. In December raids at six Swift meatpacking plants, five of which had union contracts, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained over 1,300 laborers. Hundreds were deported. At other worksites, like Woodfin Suite, the Social Security Administration has been pressed into service.

In November hundreds of meatpackers walked out of the huge Smithfield pork processing plant in Tarheel, N.C., after the company fired 60 workers for Social Security discrepancies. Mark Lauritsen, UFCW packinghouse director, says that the government and the company were colluding to thwart the union’s organizing efforts at the plant. “They were worried about people organizing a union, and the government said, here are the tools to take care of them,” he charges. In late January, ICE agents picked up 21 Smithfield workers for deportation.

Immigration enforcement measures have often been used to target unions. But this most recent wave of raids and firings has a political purpose as well.

In a press conference, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters that the Swift raids would show Congress the need for “stronger border security, effective interior enforcement and a temporary-worker program.’’ Bush wants, he said, “a program that would allow businesses that need foreign workers, because they can’t otherwise satisfy their labor needs, to be able to get those workers in a regulated program.”

The firings and raids highlight the vulnerability of immigrant workers under current U.S. law. In 1986 Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, making it a federal crime for an employer to hire a worker without valid immigration documents. While few employers have ever faced penalties, in reality the law made it a crime for undocumented workers to hold a job. That has given employers like Woodfin Suite lots of leverage over their own employees.

No current law requires employers to fire workers whose Social Security numbers don’t jibe. But this fall, President Bush proposed a new administrative rule, which would tell employers to fire anyone with a no-match. The regulation has never been officially issued, but companies claim they’re already complying with it.

Bush’s proposed regulation has its roots in a political deal. Almost since taking office, the administration has tried to get Congress to approve proposals for guest workers advanced by the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition (EWIC), an association of the 40 largest manufacturing and trade groups in the U.S., including Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods and Marriott. Two years ago, Senators Edward Kennedy and John McCain introduced a bill that would allow large employers to bring 400,000 temporary workers into the country annually. Increased enforcement of employer sanctions — Bush’s raid and no-match strategy — would force workers to stay in the program. Meanwhile, undocumented immigrants already here would have to sign up for a similar program, in hope of someday gaining permanent residence visas.

When the Senate and House couldn’t reconcile conflicting immigration bills last fall, the president took the one thing they all agreed on — increasing employer sanctions — and proposed the new regulation. The ICE raids and wave of no-match letters are putting the policy into practice.

Both the enforcement and the agenda behind it are alarming many unions. In 1999 the AFL-CIO called for the repeal of employer sanctions, as well as for a generous legalization program, greater chances for family reunification and enforcement of workplace rights. The federation was already on record opposing new guest worker programs. The Service Employees, and the two garment unions (who later joined with hotel workers to form Unite Here), were among the first to push for this position. “We still call for the repeal of employer sanctions, as we have from the time it was passed,” says Bruce Raynor, Unite Here president. “There are 12 million undocumented people living here, who are important to the economy,” he fumes. “They have a right to seek employment, and employers have a right to hire them. The only way to deal with this is to give workers rights and a path to citizenship.”

Today, the AFL-CIO still advocates the 1999 position in Congress. But the labor movement split last year on the Kennedy-McCain bill. “We did support [the bill], because we thought it was what was possible under those circumstances,” Raynor says. Both his union and SEIU argued that harsher sanctions and guest workers were an acceptable price for legalization.

The administration is driving that price higher. Labor’s most important organizing victories, like the 5,300 Houston janitors who won their first SEIU contract last year, could be easily undone. Terror generated by the no-match checks and deportations at Smithfield will hurt that campaign too. The UFCW’s Lauritsen says raids and no-match checks not only attack workers’ rights, but also are being used to promote “a drumbeat for [guest worker] reforms that aren’t in the interest of working people. Why do we want temporary workers for permanent jobs?” he asks. “If employers need workers, why not give people green cards instead? With guest workers, the threat of deportation is always there if a worker becomes unemployed.”

Like the labor movement, the Democratic Party is divided on immigration. Newly appointed House Intelligence Committee head Silvestre Reyes, a former Texas Border Patrol agent, last year introduced a bill paralleling Bush’s no-match regulation. Co-sponsors included fellow Texas Democrat Charles Gonzalez and California Republican David Drier. Party strategist Rahm Emanuel of Illinois believes a tough enforcement stance is the key to winning in 2008. The raids they call for, however, risk alienating the base of labor and Latino votes that helped elect Democrats last November.

Last fall, the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the AFL-CIO and dozens of community immigrant rights coalitions called for an alternative program including legalization, repeal of sanctions, no guest worker expansion and more opportunities for legal immigration. Other groups involved in organizing the huge immigration marches last spring have discussed similar ideas. Many supported Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee’s legalization bill in the last Congress, which had no guest worker scheme and proposed job programs to reduce competition between immigrants and communities with high unemployment. However, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi failed to appoint Jackson Lee chair of the House Immigration Subcommittee. Instead she named Democrat Zoe Lofgren, defender of Silicon Valley’s H1-B guest worker programs.

Raynor believes Democratic control of Congress means “circumstances have changed. We supported Kennedy-McCain as what was possible then. Other things are possible now.” Like Lauritsen, Raynor says, “We’d rather see people get green cards as a pathway to citizenship than have a guest worker provision.”

Nevertheless, while Unite Here and SEIU call for legalizing undocumented workers and replacing employer sanctions with labor law enforcement, both unions have renewed their alliance with the EWIC, the employers’ organization that backs guest worker programs. The AFL-CIO, meanwhile, is standing firm against guest worker programs. Along with their Bush administration allies, the companies in the EWIC — Wal-Mart, Marriott and Tyson — want a congressional deal on comprehensive immigration reform that includes the weapons they use against workers now — raids and no-match checks — and the ones they plan to use against them in the future — guest worker programs. No such deal is possible without selling out immigrant workers’ rights.

David Bacon is the author of “The Children of NAFTA” and “Communities Without Borders,” a photodocumentary on transnational communities.

Freedoms road includes the right to organize

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 10:45:00 +0000

The continuing effort by the world’s largest meatpacking giant to keep out a union has been transformed by its workers into a drive in Congress to streamline the way all American workers win the right to union representation.

Last month Smithfield Tar Heel worker Keith Ludlum testified in support of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) before the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions. The Free Choice act would prevent companies from forcing so-called “free elections” when the majority of workers in a potential bargaining unit sign cards indicating their desire for union representation.

Under the current system of “secret ballot” elections, when workers decide to have union representation by signing union cards, the company, like Smithfield, can drag the process out for years through intimidation, coercion and illegal firings. Under the Free Choice Act employees would sign cards indicating support for the union and when a majority is reached, the employer is required to recognize the union.

Fighting for a union since 1994

The situation at the Smithfield plant in Tar Heel, N.C., is perhaps the classic example of the problem that would be solved with passage of the new law. Workers at Smithfield first came to the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) in 1994, seeking a voice on the job.

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

On Feb. 8, in moving testimony before the Congressional subcommittee, Ludlum exposed abuses at Smithfield and made a compelling case for passage of the EFCA.

In 1994, Ludlum was fired by Smithfield for trying to organize a union. The UFCW filed a claim on his behalf and in 2006, after years of court action, the National Labor Relations Board ordered that he be reinstated in his previous job with back pay. Determined to fight injustice at the plant, he quit a secure, well-paid job and returned to Smithfield.

When one congressman asked him why he would do something like that Mr. Ludlum, who is a veteran of “Desert Storm,” the first war in Iraq, replied:

“The straw that broke the camel’s back was when a fellow worker broke his leg on the job. The very next day, when I came to work, he was sitting in the break room with a full leg cast and crutches. I asked him what he was doing back at work so soon. He said he didn’t want to lose his job, and the company did not want to report to OSHA [the Occupational Health and Safety Administration] a lost work day due to injury.

“For weeks, I watched this man hobble through the parking lot and across the greasy, wet floors of the kill floor and cut departments to get back and forth to the livestock yards,” Ludlum said. “Finally, one day, I approached the supervisors and asked them if the worker could park his car in a space near the livestock yard to avoid further injury. They told me only managers could park there. He’s only a worker.”

Debunking the ‘free elections’ argument

Unmoved, Republicans on the committee basically toed the “free elections” line. They opposed the Free Choice act, they said, because it would take away from the workers the right to a “secret, fair election” and replace it with a system of card check-offs “that would allow people to be bullied,” presumably by union supporters.

Debunking that argument, Ludlum described the scene of the 1997 election at Smithfield:

“On both days of the 1997 election, Bladen County deputy sheriffs, dressed in battle gear with guns, lined the long driveway leading to the plant…. As workers passed the lines of police, they saw company management standing with the head of the sheriff’s office.”

Another Republican lawmaker said he still had “trouble” supporting the Free Choice act because “it denies workers on the job the same freedoms all Americans had on Nov. 7.”

Ludlum shot back, “With all due respect sir, when you voted on Nov. 7, did the people who supported the candidate you didn’t vote for line the approach to your polling place with deputies and members of the other party pointing sawed off shotguns at you?”

35,000 citations vs. 42

Many veterans of the labor movement say Republicans “concern” about potential abuse of workers’ rights by unions is ridiculous. The NLRB, itself a government body, has, in its entire history, cited only 42 instances in which a union took liberty with the law (in most of these cases the companies involved were cited for taking unfair advantage). But the NLRB has cited companies for violation of the law at least 35,000 times.

The NLRB has, in Smithfield’s case, found massive violations of labor law and has cited the company for “creating an atmosphere of intimidation and coercion” in order to prevent the formation of the union. The company, of course, has successfully used current labor law to do this, and would have a much harder time keeping out the union under the Free Choice act.

Prior to the initial NLRB ruling against Smithfield in 2000, Sherrie Bufkin, a Smithfield supervisor, testified before a panel of U.S. senators that she had, during the specified NLRB “free secret election period,” fired people who were trying to organize a union.

She swore before the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee that “Smithfield Foods ordered me to fire employees who supported the union, telling me it was either my job or theirs.”

Company-paid spies

Also during that first “free secret election,” LaTasha Peterson, a former Smithfield worker, was part of the company’s “A-Team.” The “team” was a group of workers who were paid by Smithfield to spy on their co-workers and campaign against the union.

“I earned twice as much money campaigning against the union, and I didn’t have to do any work,” said Peterson. “I know what I did was wrong. I have union representation at my job now and I can see how much better it is to have a union at work.”

In 1999, Peterson testified before the NLRB, blowing the whistle on the company. Her heroic testimony was instrumental in getting the NLRB to rule against Smithfield.

Confirming the claims of Smithfield workers, the NLRB ruled that company witnesses had “continually lied under oath” and that “Smithfield managers conspired with the local sheriff’s department to physically intimidate and assault union supporters,” all during a so called “free secret ballot” cherished by Republican lawmakers.

Why Free Choice is needed

Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act into law is widely seen now as critical to stopping abusive companies like Smithfield and to preserving and extending union organizing rights of all American workers. The Employee Free Choice Act would give all workers basic rights like freedom of association, freedom of speech and redress of grievances.

While Smithfield in Tar Heel, N.C., is a dramatic example of the abuse workers face when they try to exercise their right to organize, there are thousands of other examples in the other 49 states. As Congress went into in recess, lawmakers headed back home. Now working families and allies organized a week of actions including rallies, roundtables and news conferences all around the country to tell their lawmakers it’s time to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

thewritergdr @ europe.com

Ford workers call for green jobs

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 10:29:00 +0000

ST. PAUL, Minn. (PAI) — Minnesota’s United Auto Workers are taking their fight to save jobs at the St. Paul Ford plant to the state Capitol, where proposed legislation would require the company to maintain the facility so it could be used for other manufacturing.

State Sen. Richard Cohen (D), who represents the Highland Park neighborhood where the plant is located, introduced legislation in early February to help deal with the looming closure. He said state Rep. Carlos Mariani (D-St. Paul) is introducing a companion bill in the state House.

The legislation requires Ford Motor Co. to “maintain the plant and related facilities in a saleable condition for at least five years” after operations end. Ford has said it will cease production of Ranger pickup trucks in 2008. Already, one shift has been shut down and nearly half of the approximately 2,000 employees have been laid off.

The looming end of the St. Paul plant is part of Ford’s multibillion-dollar downsizing, which includes other closings nationwide and the decision by at least 30,000 UAW members to take buyouts or early retirement packages.

Plant runs on hydroelectric

But the legislative response is not typical. In other such cases, both in the auto industry and other industries, local officials have tried to keep plants open while manufacturing the same products. That wouldn’t necessarily be the case with the St. Paul Ford plant.

Ford has spurned attempts by UAW Local 879 and local officials to discuss alternative uses of the plant. The facility is unique because it draws its power totally from a hydroelectric plant on the nearby Mississippi River.

‘Shabby treatment’ of workers

Cohen said his legislation was born out of a sense of frustration. “The UAW members who work at this plant have been treated quite shabbily by the company,” he said. “Whatever respect I’ve had for this company has been lost as this process unfolds.”

Cohen’s bill is similar to one adopted in 2001 when LTV mining closed its Iron Range mining operation in far northern Minnesota.

Keeping the Ford plant “in saleable condition” would require a skeleton crew of workers to operate the hydroelectric plant and a boiler and maintain the exterior of the facility, said Bob Killeen, Local 879 financial secretary. News reports say Ford is in talks to sell the hydroelectric plant. Cohen said he expects legislative action on his proposal within two months, even though hearings have not been set yet.

Local 879 Health and Safety Director Lynn Hinkle has spearheaded the union’s attempt to find other manufacturers that could take over the Ford plant.

Hinkle said the process of forcing Ford to sell the plant to a manufacturer — as opposed to tearing it down and selling the land to developers — will be difficult. But “there are incredible opportunities,” he added. Use of the plant to produce, for example, wind turbines would provide a huge spur to “green” manufacturing throughout the state, he added.

Ecologically friendly manufacturing

Conversion of older closed factories to newer ecologically friendly manufacturing is one plank in the Apollo Alliance energy independence program pushed by the Steelworkers. For example, a historic former steel plant near Pittsburgh now makes turbines for a Spanish-owned windmill firm — and its workers are USW members.

Noted Killeen, “We are committed to maintaining good manufacturing jobs in the city of St. Paul.”

Barb Kucera writes for Workday Minnesota.

Workers Correspondence

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:51:00 +0000

To: Union supporters of HR 676 single-payer health care Re: Reintroduction of HR 676 in the 110th Congress

Several readers forwarded this communication.

On Jan. 24, 2007, Congressman John Conyers reintroduced HR 676, the single-payer National Health Insurance Act, in the 110th Congress. The bill’s number remains the same, but all of the co-sponsors from the 108th and 109th Congresses will have to renew their co-sponsorship.

We’re off to a good start! So far, 53 members of the 110th Congress have signed on as co-sponsors, including five who were not on before. Four of the new co-sponsors were just elected Nov. 7. For the first time, we now have co-sponsors from Iowa, Minnesota and Tennessee! To see who has signed on go to: .

Four co-sponsors in the 109th Congress are no longer in the House. Two, Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Bernie Sanders (Vt.), were elected to the Senate.

If your union or central labor council has endorsed HR 676, now is the time to let members of Congress know of this endorsement. Please contact the appropriate union officers and ask them to send a letter to all members of Congress who represent any of your members informing them that HR 676 was endorsed by your union, central labor council or state AFL-CIO. The letter should request that the representatives join as co-sponsors in the 110th Congress.

Please write to your own member of Congress with the same request and get friends to do the same. If they need to find who their representative is, just put in the zip code here: . Share this information with those you know who support a single-payer solution to our nation’s health care crisis. We are up against powerful corporate interests in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. We will need an energetic grassroots effort to persuade our representatives to do the right thing. Act today for HR 676! We can save lives, end the suffering and build healthier unions and a more compassionate nation.

Solidarity,

Kay Tillow

All Unions Committee for Single-Payer Health Care - HR 676