People Before Profit blog

Gay rights and labor share common struggle

Fri, 26 May 2006 07:54:00 +0000

While the relationship between the LGBT community and the labor movement has traditionally been weak, things seem to be changing. LGBT rights organizations and trade unions are working together more and more, coordinating campaigns, running candidates and fighting for issues like domestic partner benefits and gay marriage.

Sandra Telep of Pride At Work, a constituency group for LGBT union members, says, “Unions do a lot of work with and within the LGBT community. We work behind the scenes, but don’t get a lot of credit for the work that we do.”

In fact, unions and union members have a long history of fighting for domestic partner benefits during union contract negotiations. In 1982, the Newspaper Guild, which is part of the Communications Workers union (CWA), won the first domestic partner benefits package in U.S. history. Since then unions have fought for and won domestic partner benefits in contract negotiations all across the country.

Unions are also in the forefront in the struggle for the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry. Last year, at its national convention, the AFL-CIO, the largest labor federation in the U.S., passed a resolution in support of gay marriage rights.

The resolution said in part: “The Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) [would] amend the U.S. Constitution to deny important rights to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender families, such as the right to hospital visitation, inheritance, and health care rights for partners.”

According to the AFL-CIO, right-wing attempts to define marriage as a “union between man and woman” through the FMA only serve to divide and weaken the movement for economic and social justice.

Also at the AFL-CIO convention, Nancy Wohlforth, co-president of Pride At Work and secretary treasurer of the Office and Professional Employees International Union, was elected to the federation’s executive committee. Wohlforth, a founding member of the San Francisco-based Lesbian and Gay Labor Alliance, is the first openly lesbian or gay person to serve on the AFL-CIO executive committee.

Most recently, the Service Employees International Union, with 1.8 million members, sharply criticized the U.S. vote to ban LGBT rights groups from the United Nations.

“The U.S. joined some of the world’s most oppressive regimes in backing a United Nations initiative to silence advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality,” said Andy Stern, president of SEIU.

“All over the country unions are building successful coalitions with LGBT rights organizations like the Human Rights Campaign,” said Telep. “And in many cases unions and LGBT rights coalitions help Pride At Work chapters form.” Currently there are fourteen Pride At Work chapters across the country.

While union leaders support LGBT rights out of a sense of justice and civil rights, that’s not the only reason. They also support LGBT rights out of self-interest. The same organizations that attack LGBT rights, organizations like Focus on the Family and Exodus International, also attack unions.

For example, Focus on the Family, the largest right-wing religious organization in the U.S., finances and supports anti-union “paycheck protection” bills. These bills require unions to obtain written permission from each member before spending union money on political purposes like lobbying for pro-union legislation, communicating with and mobilizing members, and paying expenses for union political action committees. “Paycheck protection” would weaken the labor movement and create unnecessary bureaucracy and red tape in an environment where business already outspends unions 10 to 1.

Said Telep, “The LGBT rights movement and the trade unions have a common enemy. Which is another reason why the labor movement has worked so hard to support LGBT rights.”

While there is a long history of unions fighting for LGBT rights, a lot more work needs to be done. Union members are not one hegemonic group. There are many different political trends and tendencies within the union movement. And unfortunately, some union members are wary of LGBT rights organizations and have fallen victim to right-wing attempts to divide the union vote with wedge issues like gay marriage.

After the AFL-CIO resolution was announced some union members sent letters of protest to the federation leadership. Others complained about union money being used to fund LGBT rights initiatives and organizations, as well as LGBT candidates in electoral races. Others union members actively campaigned against gay marriage.

Overall, though, the organized labor movement — with its combined 13 million members, resources and infrastructure — is moving in the right direction and expanding its field of work to include LGBT rights.

Tony Pecinovsky (tonypec@pww.org) is the district staff person for the Communist Party in Missouri and Kansas. This article was originally written for the Vital Voice, a St. Louis-area gay and lesbian rights bi-weekly.

S. Africas workers strike for justice, jobs

Fri, 26 May 2006 05:31:00 +0000

Earlier this month the people of South Africa celebrated the 10th anniversary of the first democratic constitution. The dismantling of the oppressive apartheid regime in the early 1990s, and the end of dominance by a privileged white minority, gave hope to millions of black South Africans seeking justice and self-determination.

The first provision of the country’s constitution prioritizes the values of “human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms.” The struggle to fulfill those values continues to this day.

On May 18, the leadership of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), a 2-million-member federation of over 30 unions, mobilized its members and supporters in a day of action, including a nationwide strike, to bring attention to “the national catastrophe of unemployment and poverty.”

Up to 80 percent of South Africa’s industrial workers heeded the call and downed tools. The country’s metal workers, especially, turned out in big numbers to demand that the government put a stop to job losses.

The action accented Cosatu’s “Jobs and Poverty Campaign,” which has several key demands, including better paying jobs, job security, an end to outsourcing, public works projects on a mass scale, equal access to education, improved government services, resistance to World Trade Organization demands, and an end to racist and gender abuse at the workplace.

The current government, led by the African National Congress, has a target of reducing unemployment significantly by 2014, but is falling short of its interim goals. Today, according to official statistics, about half of South Africa’s 44 million people live below the poverty line, and the unemployment rate is 27 percent. The true rate of unemployment is closer to 40 percent, Cosatu said.

That black Africans make up only half of the university student population is another indication that further steps are needed to achieve real equality.

Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu’s general secretary, recently said, “We fought for democracy in this country, but where is democracy when people are engulfed with poverty and unemployment? The ‘better life for all’ concept promised by the government … should be honored.

“Four out of 10 people in this country are able to find a job and the rest live in poverty,” he said.

Cosatu is part of a national tripartite alliance that includes the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party (SACP), an alliance that was forged in the struggle against apartheid.

Blade Nzimande, general secretary of the SACP, recently spoke about his party’s 1962 program, which characterized apartheid South Africa as a “colonialism of a special type.”

“Of course, 12 years of democracy have brought about major changes,” he said. “But have we decisively transformed the economic foundations of colonialism of a special type? In many ways this is the core question being posed, in action, by current working-class struggles, including the strikes under way in various sectors of our economy, as well as the May 18 Cosatu action. Indeed, we may even ask whether our economic policies since 1996 might not have actually reinforced some of the key systemic economic features of ‘colonialism of a special type.’”

Nzimande added, “The ownership and control of private capital in a capitalist society are not some neutral technical functions. Ownership and control is premised on the intensifying labor exploitation and maximizing profit. That is the iron law of capitalism. And while the state is no longer a white minority state, there has been a concerted class attempt to ensure that the new political elite is thoroughly submerged within an emerging black capitalist stratum.”

He said the May 18 day of action would also serve to disrupt the growing “alliance between some of our leading political cadres and emerging capitalist interests.”

Workers confront Sunoco over proposed pay cuts

Fri, 26 May 2006 05:14:00 +0000

SUGAR LAND, Texas — On May 19 a spirited group of labor activists converged on the offices of Sunoco Logistics here to support its truck drivers, members of the United Steelworkers Local 13-1267, who are fighting a proposed pay cut.

It was an early weekday morning and the Houston sun was hot and the fire ants and mosquitoes were already biting, but that didn’t dampen the spirits of the 15 activists who rallied to support their fellow unionists.

Jim Lefton helped organize the informational picket line outside Sunoco’s offices at the Lake Point Plaza Building. He said the drivers, whose trucks carry crude oil, have been working to get a decent contract for years with Sunoco. However, the company is now proposing, in their “last, best and final offer,” to not only deny them a contract, but also to cut their wages.

The company’s offer, Lefton said, would result in “at least a $3 million reduction in pay” for the workers in the bargaining unit.

Flyers at the event read, “Sunoco wants the people who carry your crude oil to take an average $1,705 a year pay cut while their profits increased by 20 percent last quarter. Corporate greed is not a good thing!”

One woman, wearing her Exxon Mobil overalls, traveled from Baytown, 50 miles away, after a shift change to show her solidarity with the truck drivers.

In mobilizing for the action earlier in the week, the Steelworkers union said, “There are many other onerous proposals in their offer that will attack seniority, overtime and holiday pay, etc. The group, being new to the USW, would like to know someone cares and we need to show Sunoco that a Steelworker is a Steelworker is a Steelworker no matter what they do for a living or where they work.”

More miners killed

Fri, 26 May 2006 04:53:00 +0000

“I think it’s a crisis right now,” said Tony Oppegard, former top lawyer for Kentucky’s Mine Safety and Licensing Office. “When we have 31 coal miners killed in less than five months, that’s a crisis and it needs to be treated as a crisis and dealt with. We need to stop this fiction that all coal operators are good guys and all you need to do is talk them and they’ll do the right thing, which is the cornerstone of the Bush administration philosophy. We need to crack down on operators instead of trying to babysit them.”

Talking has been going on since Jan. 2 when the West Virginia Sago Mine blew up, killing 12 miners.

On May 20, six men kissed their families goodbye, heading to the graveyard shift at Kentucky Darby #1 mine, in southeastern Kentucky’s Harlan County. At about 1 a.m. an explosion ripped through the mine, traveling 5,000 feet to the surface, puncturing oilcans located 200-300 feet from the entrance. Amon “Cotton” Brock, 51, and Jimmy D. Lee, 33, died in the blast. Roy Middleton, 35, George William Petra, 49, and Paris Thomas, 53, survived the explosion but suffocated in the lethal carbon monoxide-laced air. Only Paul Ledford was rescued.

“It makes me upset that he smothered to death,” Middleton’s widow, Mary, told reporters.

Miners at Darby #1 used the same self-rescue oxygen devices as the doomed Sago miners.

“I just think all miners everywhere need bigger oxygen supplies,” widow Tilda Thomas said. “The rescuers only have an hour supply, even if they work at all.” Tilda and Paris Thomas, married 29 years, expected their second grandchild in June. Anger blotted out Thomas’ tears as she recounted her husband’s pride in raising corn, beans, squash, onions and tomatoes. “He loved to garden,” she said. “He just kept telling the other day he was too old to do this stuff. I told him, ‘When you get to be 80 you’ll be too old.’ But that ain’t gonna happen, is it?”

United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts offered the union’s assistance and expertise to the nonunion Darby #1 miners and their families. “This tragedy only compounds what has already been a horrific year in America’s coal mines,” he said. “There have now been 31 coal miners killed in the nation’s mines in 2006 and we are not yet even halfway through the year.” In 2005, 22 miners died at work. In Kentucky, eight died in all of 2005, but 10 have died in the first five months of 2006.

The talk continues, including by the coal companies at hearings in Charleston, W.Va., where they are not only resisting every effort by state and federal legislators to answer the life-and-death crisis but also want a break in rescue and health and safety standards.

Coal corporations want the media to go away. Testifying in Charleston, Elizabeth Chamberlin, general manager for safety at Consol Energy, Pennsylvania’s largest coal operator, criticized the “media reporting frenzy” that creates “angst among our families and negative press for the industry as a whole.”

The “negative press” indicates that, as at Sago, the owners of Darby #1, John North and Ralph Napier Sr., had been cited by the Mine Safety and Health Administration 257 times since 2001. There were 10 violations this month alone. Of the total, 99 were classified as “‘serious and substantial,” including high levels of volatile coal dust which could have led to the explosion. Fines levied by MSHA total $27,651.

The 34 miners at Darby #1 produced 118,052 tons of coal and $3.4 million in profit for North and Napier in 2005.

Average household income in Harlan County is $18,665 per year, and 32.5 percent of the county’s 32,000 residents live below the poverty line.

An investigation is under way to determine the cause of the explosion and several Kentucky legislators have called for hearings. There is a glitch, though, for Kentucky state and federal lawmakers. Kentucky’s Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate whip, is married to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. Her department oversees MSHA and has yet to respond to the “babysitting” charge.

A Texas trucker on fuel prices

Fri, 19 May 2006 06:15:00 +0000

Do you remember a few years back when all those people ran out and bought diesel-powered cars because the fuel was so much cheaper than gas? Heck, diesel was just a by-product of gasoline, it’ll always be cheap. Or so it seemed at the time.

Being a trucker has always been a tough job, dealing with the weather, the traffic and trying to find your way around in unfamiliar territory. But me and many others like me have always done our best to persevere and get our freight delivered, rain or shine. Do we go around looking for a pat on the back? No, not usually. For the most part, all I ask for is a little bit of open road, a good paying load, and a few hours to close my eyes.

Doesn’t seem like much to ask for, does it? So why is my government trying to put me out of business? Here’s a rumor: the government wants to eliminate all of the smaller trucking companies and owner operators so that it can better regulate the trucking industry to better cater to its own monetary needs. And what would be the easiest way to get that ball rolling? How about pricing diesel fuel out of reach of the little guy?

I know that I’m looking seriously at a career change, you know, just in case I go under like other independent truckers I know have had to do. I hear a lot of news listening to the CB radio and spending time in truck stops, and I hate to say that most of it is not good anymore. I hear about another oil company that has just joined the elite companies by showing all-time record profits.

Give me a break, GW! Why does it seem like you always have a good explanation to put it all in perspective. But I guess that’s all right as long as you have your predecessors to pin the blame on. Fuel is about to hit $3 in my neighborhood again, and most of the truckers I know are madder than hell about it. GW, its time for you to wipe that smirky little grin off your face, get your head out of Iraq’s backside, your hands out of our pockets, and start fixing the problems that you and your government have created. Or, step aside and let someone in who can fix it. But don’t worry about your next career move, I know plenty of car lots that are always looking for a good used car salesman.

— Joe Davis, Texas

Security officers organizing in Oakland, Berkeley

Fri, 19 May 2006 05:07:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. — As part of a nationwide campaign by the Service Employees union to organize security guards, workers at ABC Security Services are in the midst of a drive to win justice on the job and recognition for their union, SEIU Local 24/7.

While ABC workers, largely African American and recent immigrants, prepared for candlelight vigils before May 16 City Council meetings in Oakland and Berkeley, Local 24/7 lead organizer Emily Heath said the union will urge the council to put its security contract — presently with ABC — out to bid. ABC provides services to the Oakland city government and the Port of Oakland, as well as to private firms.

Heath said the vigil is part of an educational effort to make sure the public and the city councils know about the problems at the security firm. The union says last year ABC was found to be out of compliance with Oakland’s living wage ordinance. Heath said the union and a number of the workers have filed charges with the federal and state governments, and the National Labor Relations Board, over a range of violations.

A resolution of support for the workers’ organizing effort is before the Berkeley City Council, Heath added.

Supporting the workers is the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE) and its Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, which point out that the workers who protect some of the most important government offices and largest corporations are paid poverty wages, cannot afford health care, receive inadequate training and have few opportunities for job advancement.

“These are folks who provide security for us on a daily basis, and yet they themselves and their families lack security — job security, economic and health security,” said EBASE organizer Brooke Anderson. “As a faith community, we felt it was important to take a stand with these workers.”

Local 24/7 already has about 5,000 members working for 10 private security firms in San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. “Among national companies with prestigious accounts, ABC Security is a holdout — that’s why they are specially important to us,” said Heath.

Nationwide, SEIU is working to organize some 200,000 private security officers in what it calls “the largest organizing effort of a predominantly African American workforce in history.” Other cities include Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia, Seattle and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Mothers Day plea: Give my mom a break

Fri, 19 May 2006 05:01:00 +0000

CHICAGO — On May 11, hotel housekeepers, their children, members of Unite Here Local 1 and their supporters held a Mother’s Day rally in front of the State of Illinois building, calling attention to the problem of increasing workload-related injuries in the hotel industry.

Edona Hashimi, 12, missed school to speak at the event and show her support for her mom. Hashimi told the World she was there “to let everybody know how hard our moms work and to show them our moms are always there for us, and to say, give my mom a break.”

“I hope they get what they want,” she said.

According to a new union-sponsored, nationwide study of 87 hotels titled “Creating Luxury, Enduring Pain,” hotel housekeepers, predominantly women of color and largely immigrant, experienced a 4 percent jump in workplace injuries over the past five years. The report says housekeepers are injured at twice the rate of other hotel workers.

Causes include the speed-up associated with rising room quotas, where housekeepers are required to clean a certain number of rooms per day, heavier mattresses and linens, and chronic understaffing.

During the rally, several workers led a bed-making demonstration on an actual bed to show just how difficult the task can be.

Deborah Hood, a worker at the Hyatt Regency, told the World she cleans and changes the beds in up to 16 rooms a day. During a typical day, she changes 144 pillows. “We are here today fighting for higher wages and better health insurance,” she said.

The Rev. Dr. Calvin Morris of the Community Renewal Society told the crowd he remembered how his mother was a hotel worker and raised him by herself.

“You are fighting for respect,” he told the workers, “to help make other people’s lives comfortable.”

He went on to say that his mother was diagnosed with a severe illness when she was 18, yet she continued working in a hotel for 30 years doing backbreaking work, eventually dying at the young age of 48.

“She worked even though she shouldn’t have, to support her son,” said Morris.

“So I honor my mother today, for people in this country and around the world. I owe it to her, honoring working moms,” he added. “The struggle in the U.S. is a global struggle, a world struggle. Let’s do what our mothers did for our generation — so let’s unite here and rise.”

Other speakers included state Sen. James DeLeo and Esther Lopez, deputy chief of staff for Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

PWW shines at Union Label trade show

Fri, 19 May 2006 04:34:00 +0000

CLEVELAND — “Sign the petition to raise the state minimum wage,” was the call to passers-by from volunteers at the People’s Weekly World booth at the 2006 AFL-CIO Union Industries Show.

The annual event, showcasing unions and union-made goods, was held May 5-7 at Cleveland’s IX Center. It attracted over 100,000 people from throughout the region who came to check out cars, tools, housewares, canned goods and services provided by union labor throughout the country. They also took part in a seemingly endless series of drawings that raffled off over $l million worth of these products.

It was the first time the PWW had a booth and by all accounts it was a tremendous success. Over 1,100 people signed the referendum petition that the Ohio AFL-CIO hopes will put the issue on the ballot for November’s elections. The Cleveland AFL-CIO Retirees Council also collected 1,500 signatures at their booth and several hundred more were collected by a Teamster’s local.

Ohio and Kansas are the only two states where employers not involved in interstate commerce can pay workers less than the federal minimum wage. The ballot measure would raise the state level from the current $4.25 to $6.85 an hour with an automatic cost of living adjustment.

The PWW booth was a boost for organized labor in another way. Nearly 700 people signed up for introductory subscriptions to this working-class weekly which rallies, educates and mobilizes its readers behind the cause of working people.

Although many who signed up knew of the paper, others saw it for the first time and were delighted to know that it existed. They were hungry for news and needed little convincing that the Bush administration, under right-wing corporate control, is pursuing policies disastrous for working people.

They seethed with anger and frustration as they spoke of bitter experiences with long strikes and lockouts, corrupt politicians and skyrocketing costs of fuel, healthcare and college educations.

Many were union stewards, labor council delegates and local officers. Although most were from Ohio and nearby states, some came from far away. Al Perisho, president of the southern California International Longshore and Warehouse Union Pensioners, said he hadn’t seen the PWW for a long time and was glad we were there. He took out a subscription for his office. Others came from Alabama, Virginia, Tennessee, Minnesota and Canada.

S Se Puede means We Shall Overcome

Fri, 12 May 2006 06:02:00 +0000

May 1, a day of worker celebration, began in the United States around the struggle for the eight-hour day. Now it is honored across the world, but largely ignored in the United States. How fitting then that this year, immigrant workers from across the world have revived the day, marching to defend their dignity — and energizing an entire movement for social justice.

They march to make their humanity known. They march to make their views known. They march because they will not be victims or pawns, but will be the subjects of their own history in this country. The new immigrants seek precisely what has made our country great: They thirst for democracy and freedom, a job and security for their families, for citizenship rights and to leave repression and poverty behind.

Lower-wage workers in this country — many of them African Americans — worry that employers are using immigrants to displace them, to undermine good jobs, force wages down and weaken labor organizing. But the answer to that isn’t to turn on other poor workers. It is to raise the minimum wage (frozen since 1997); bolster union organizing and create a card-check system so a majority of workers can choose a union; run a full employment economy, and crack down on exploitative employers and off-the-books hiring.

Part of the anger directed at immigrants comes from workers understandably scared as manufacturing jobs are shipped abroad and lower-paying service jobs take their place. But global corporations, not immigrants, are taking those jobs abroad. The answer isn’t cleaning up immigration, but electing leaders who will challenge the corporate hold over our trade policies.

Each wave of immigration inspires hot anti-immigrant anger and rhetoric — “illegal alien hordes” are pouring across the border taking jobs away from Americans. We heard it in the “yellow peril” that led to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. It was directed against Irish and Italians immigrants at the turn of the century, who were portrayed as drunk, violent, lazy and dissolute. African American migrants from the South were cursed as scabs on the “white worker.” Now Mexican and other undocumented immigrants are said to threaten African Americans and other poor people, not to speak of the entire “American way of life.” With hatred comes violence: Last week, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles and California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante received death threats. And a new “Kill Mexicans” video game is piercing its way through the Internet.

Immigrants of previous generations, including African Americans, should see the new undocumented workers as allies, not threats. They share with African Americans a history of repression, of being subjected to back-breaking, soul-deadening work — or to no work at all.

They also share a common heritage. Less than 10 percent of enslaved Africans ended up in the United States. The vast majority were shipped to Latin America and the West Indies. People of color are brothers and sisters under and of the skin, whether we are called undocumented “Latino” immigrants or “African Americans.”

As each wave of immigrants begins to demand fair wages, human rights or citizenship, they are denounced as threatening the American way of life. Critics want to send us back to Africa, back to the plantation, back to Mexico, back to China or shift us to even more barren Native reservations — even those of us who have been here for generations.

But when the right wing of the House forced through its latest anti-immigrant legislation, which would criminalize 11 million people living in America and all those who provided them with any services, the insult turned to threat.

Criminals? No. They are our mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles. Illegal aliens? No. They are our friends, teachers, church leaders, health care providers and business owners. Whatever differences we may have are dwarfed by our common struggle. So in April and on May 1, immigrants and their human rights supporters took to the streets, reigniting this era’s civil rights struggle.

This new immigrant freedom movement is being embraced by African Americans and today’s movement for peace and social justice. In today’s movement, many undocumented immigrants have already lost jobs, been detained or deported and separated from their families. But like African-American freedom fighters of the 1960s, their minds are “stayed on freedom.” As I see it, their rallying cry — “Sí Se Puede” (“Yes We Can”) — is Spanish for “We Shall Overcome.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson is president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. This article originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Gulf Coast Update

Fri, 12 May 2006 05:46:00 +0000

Rally calls for oversight on workers’ rights

Workers, community organizations and members of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO marched and rallied at the city’s federal building May 2 to expose the rampant abuses of workers’ rights in the post-Katrina rebuilding, the AFL-CIO reported. The rally called for the creation of a workers’ rights commission to set standards for how workers are treated in the rebuilding of New Orleans.

“Companies are exploiting us, exposing us to hazards and walking away with their profits,” said Tiger Hamilton, president of the New Orleans AFL-CIO. “The people who are the heart and soul of New Orleans lost not only our homes and way of life after Katrina and Rita — we lost our security, our safety and our dignity.”

Larry Carter Jr., who represents both the United Teachers of New Orleans and the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, called for opening the city’s public schools. “It is a horrible injustice that thousands of children are not being educated and thousands of teachers can no longer afford to do the work that they love,” he said. Teachers have lost not only their jobs and insurance, he noted, but also their collective bargaining rights.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, speaking to a conference of union lawyers before going to the march, outlined objections to the Bush administration and officials who, “instead of sending help, send mercenaries, bulldozers and real estate speculators” and “reward lawlessness as long as the criminal’s name ends in the letters ‘I-N-C.’”

— Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org)

Election blues

The right to vote remains displaced from New Orleans.

In what was billed as “the most important election in the history of New Orleans,” only 36 percent of those registered voted in the recent city elections. Turnout was heavy and high in the mostly prosperous and white areas of Uptown, where little damage occurred, and exceptionally low in the heavily damaged and mostly Black areas of New Orleans East, Gentilly and the 9th Ward — where some precincts reported as little as 15 percent voter participation.

The state refusal to set up satellite voting for those displaced outside the state resulted in exactly the disenfranchisement predicted.

While Iraqis who had not lived in Iraq in years were helped to vote in the U.S. by our government, people forced out of state by Katrina for seven months were not allowed to vote where they are temporarily living.

This has national implications. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that in the 2002 U.S. Senate seat runoff between incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu and Republican Suzanne Haik Terrell, the Orleans factor made the difference for Landrieu. The senator won Orleans by 78,900 votes, compared with her statewide lead of 42,012. In the 2003 gubernatorial runoff between Democrat Kathleen Blanco and Republican Bobby Jindal, Blanco won statewide by 54,874 votes. She won by a margin of 49,741 votes in New Orleans.

Worse, the systematic exclusion of the displaced gives fuel to those who do not want the poor to return and helps create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Low turnout in poor neighborhoods where the displaced could not drive back in to vote can now be taken as an indication of lack of interest and an excuse to further silence their voices. As the Washington Post noted: “How many people turned out to vote in each precinct was being viewed as an indicator of which neighborhoods are likely to be rebuilt; in many abandoned neighborhoods, people fear that residents who have left for good would not vote, revealing their lack of interest in the neighborhood and the city. Turnout could offer clues to the future racial makeup of the city.”

— Bill Quigley (quigley@loyno.edu). This is excerpted from Quigley’s “Eight Months After Katrina: Don’t Come Back to New Orleans Unless You Intend to Join the Fight for Justice!” available online at www.pww.org.

Contractors bilked taxpayers

While removing enough debris to cover Britain, contractors working on hurricane recovery have overbilled the government in a $63 billion operation that only will get more expensive, according to a House report released May 4.

Mileage claims were overstated to get extra fees, debris was mixed improperly to inflate prices and companies sent bills twice for removing the same loads, Democrats on the GOP-controlled House Government Reform Committee found.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who compiled the report for the hearing on Katrina contracting, also complained about layers of subcontractors that drove up costs.

In a story last October, The Associated Press reported instances in which the Katrina debris cleanup involved five layers of subcontractors. The Army Corps of Engineers refused to provide the cost figures specified in the master contracts and denied AP’s request for those figures, made under the Freedom of Information Act.

— Larry Margasak, Associated Press

Protests rock Puerto Rico: Workers say Let the rich pay for fiscal crisis

Fri, 12 May 2006 04:23:00 +0000

Protest rallies and marches have rocked Puerto Rico since May Day, when the government closed down 43 agencies, throwing 95,000 people out of work due to a budget shortfall of $738 million. More workers have been added to the unemployment lines as three municipalities have closed down completely and another 12 have laid off workers because they haven’t received monies due them by the central government in San Juan.

Almost half of Puerto Rico’s municipalities get 70 percent or more of their operating expenses from San Juan.

School employees and children have been the most affected by the closings, as the government shut down 1,600 schools two weeks before the end of the academic year. Many have called the shutdowns a crime against children. Some 500,000 students were forced to stay home, cut off from the free breakfast and lunch served at schools.

A popular demand is “Let the rich pay” for the fiscal crisis. Support from different sectors of this Caribbean nation, currently a U.S. colony, rallied around a bill proposed by the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) that would have imposed a 10 percent minimum tax on corporations with profits of $1 million or more. The PIP estimates this would boost tax revenues by $2 billion per year. Opposition from the pro-colonial parties killed the bill.

At the core of the crisis is the colonial status of Puerto Rico. Intransigence on the part of Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), which supports the current status of Puerto Rico, and the legislature, which is controlled by the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP), has resulted in a stalemate. They have been battling for two years, unable to agree on a budget. The executive branch and the legislature are arguing and trying to get political advantage over one another by blaming each other over who is at fault for the crisis and what solution to impose. Both the PPD and the PNP favor a sales tax, but are fighting over whether it should be 7 percent, 5.9 percent, 5 percent or 4 percent.

Jesus Delgado, education director of the Puerto Rican Federation of Teachers (FMPR), told the World in a telephone interview that the current administration and the last two governors are to blame for the crisis. “They spent and spent, knowing we were heading into a financial crisis,” he said.

Delgado said that a major cause for the deficit is tax evasion by the large corporations. “They underreport their profits and pay a lower tax,” he said. While he said it is mostly the “foreign multinational corporations,” mostly from the U.S., there are a number of Puerto Rican companies that also underreport. He said this is especially true in the construction business.

The union “adheres to the slogan ‘Let the rich pay’ for the crisis,” he said. “It is unfair to put it on the backs of the Puerto Rican workers. The tax will have a devastating effect on the people of Puerto Rico because it is falling on top of increases in the cost of living.” Delgado listed raises in water rates, electricity, retail prices, tolls, gasoline and other goods. He added that not long ago “it would cost $20 weekly for gasoline. Today it costs from $40 to $50 a week.”

Delgado said, “The sales tax would be devastating for our members on top of other increases. We have families where both husband and wife are teachers or where one is a teacher and the other works in another government agency.”

Delgado said the union has called for a meeting of delegates to discuss the next steps to take in light of a special commission’s report due to be released as the World was going to press. This commission, composed of leaders of the legislative and executive branches of the Puerto Rican government, as well as religious leaders, met in secret. It is supposed to report out a compromise plan.

However, PNP and PPD leaders have said that they would not necessarily follow the commission’s recommendations.

Also at work are the banks and financial institutions, who are manipulating the crisis to their advantage. Moody’s Investor Services downgraded Puerto Rico’s bond status, forcing higher interest payments.

Hector Pesquera, a leader of the Hostos National Independence Movement, noted in a recent article that the Puerto Rican government “has a public debt of $40 billion.” He wrote that the interest payment of $300 million a month on this debt “is the highest in the [Western] Hemisphere” and goes mainly to banks and other financial institutions.

Independence Party Chairman Ruben Berrios criticized the government, saying it was closing down and laying off workers to satisfy the financial institutions which hold Puerto Rican bonds. “This is why the governor has closed down the government, to placate the bondholders, to placate the big corporations, to placate the sacred cows. In doing so, in effect, he is robbing the public employees and the Puerto Rican people.”

AFSCME honors Dr. Martin Luther King in Houston

Thu, 11 May 2006 03:27:00 +0000

HOUSTON - On April 29, AFSCME Local 1550 held a commemorative event for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at St. John Missionary Baptist Church here.

The Rev. Dr. Michael P. Williams of Joy Tabernacle and the Houston Community College Board of Trustees spoke of the importance of forming coalitions between communities of faith and communities of labor.

He told the audience it is important for people to speak out and bargain collectively. He said this must be done in spite of the influence of corporations. He said the days of slavery in the U.S. are over. He ended by asking “If not us, then who? If not now, then when?”

The Texas Southern University Championship Debate Team was magnificent. They read passages from the Gettysburg address and the speeches of Dr. King. Their presentation was dramatic and moving.

State Rep. Dora Oliva of the 27th District talked about the importance of the contributions of young people in the community. She also spoke of the importance of the immigrant rights struggle and called for solidarity to support that struggle.

Two days later 30,000 people gathered and marched in Houston in coalitions led by AFL-CIO to mark May 1, International Workers Day, by standing up for immigrant rights. This was really significant given that Houston is the home of George H.W. Bush, Tom DeLay, Ken Lay and John Culberson.

Next, Barbara Radnofsky, attorney, and Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, pointed out that Texas leads the nation in the number of uninsured children as well as stroke, heart attack and diabetes. She said she was raised to believe that we are here on this earth “due to the service and sacrifice of others, we didn’t do it on our own.”

Radnofsky said her father was shot down over Nazi Germany in World War II and was in a prison camp. One day the Nazis running the camp commanded that all Jews step forward. She indicated that all the men stepped forward, thus saving her father’s life.

She made the connection that she is here today due to the risk taking and sacrifices of others. She said that teenagers were sacrificed in that war to save the world. She pointed out that our teenagers today are being sacrificed due to the anti-education legislation and cuts in health care being passed. She concluded by quoting Dr. King: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Many other labor and religious leaders spoke and there were excellent musical offerings in this fine commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. There was a quote from him on the program which read, “Civil rights and worker’s rights are one and the same struggle.”

Why we fight for immigrant rights

Fri, 05 May 2006 07:44:00 +0000

Many workers — union and nonunion — ask why unions support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Why, as one member puts it, are we fighting for the “illegals who have been taking our jobs”?

I remind them of a powerful statement from labor’s past that lives on today: An injury to one is an injury to all.

America’s broken immigration system has allowed employers to create a low-wage labor pool of immigrant workers that is easily exploitable. Employers can pay these workers less, force them to work in intolerable conditions, block their right to union representation and threaten to turn them in to immigration officials if they complain. That’s immoral.

And when employers drive down wages and working conditions for one group of workers, they harm us all. That’s not progressive rhetoric — it’s cold, hard truth. U.S.-born workers who work alongside immigrants and in the same industries suffer the same exploitation. The U.S. Department of Labor, for example, has found the poultry industry — with a workforce split about evenly between African Americans and immigrants — was 100 percent out of compliance with federal wage and hour laws. More than half of the country’s garment factories violate wage and hour laws and more than three-quarters violate health and safety laws, according to the department. If a workplace is dangerous for immigrant workers, it is equally dangerous for their U.S.-born co-workers.

Some people say we could solve this by simply keeping immigrants out of the country. But America is a nation of immigrants, made up almost entirely of European, African, Asian and South and Central American brothers and sisters who came here in previous waves of migration. Some 12 million undocumented immigrants are here today — that’s reality — and they are working and paying taxes and strengthening our economy and our culture. Here’s more reality: Globalization is not going away. Employers will do all they can to fill the jobs that can’t be exported to low-wage countries by importing low-wage workers with no ability to exercise their rights. The genie of the globalized economy is not going back into the bottle.

The answer isn’t to make immigrant workers here now disappear, or turn them into felons, as the bill passed by the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives would do. The answer is to deprive employers of the means to exploit them and lower work quality for all of us. As long as immigrant workers can be terrorized by the threat of deportation or prosecution based on their status, employers can control and abuse them. But 12 million immigrant workers with the power and rights of citizenship would be vital partners with U.S.-born workers in the fight for living wages, health and retirement benefits and justice on the job.

And the answer isn’t guest worker programs that U.S. employers use to turn permanent jobs that pay well into temporary jobs that offer few or no benefits, pay lower wages and chain workers to the employers that recruited them, making them vulnerable to exploitation.

Again and again employers say they need immigrant workers because U.S.-born workers won’t do the jobs. But you and I know darn well it’s slave wages U.S. workers are rejecting, not the jobs themselves.

I believe deeply that immigrant workers are our sisters and brothers and that every person who works in this country is entitled to the full range of rights and opportunities America provides. We must support immigrant workers because supporting all working people is the core of what it means to be a trade unionist. We are always — always — stronger together than when we allow ruthless employers and the politicians they own to drive wedges between us.

The AFL-CIO and our member unions demand a path to citizenship for immigrant workers and fair treatment and freedom from exploitation for all the workers of America.

John Sweeney is president of the AFL-CIO. This article is reprinted from www.aflcio.org.

Rivers of marchers flow through the streets for united families, legalization and rights

Fri, 05 May 2006 07:28:00 +0000

Northern California: Rivers of white-clad demonstrators flowed through the main streets of Bay Area cities and towns on May 1 — 120,000 in San Jose, 40,000 in Sacramento and in San Francisco, 25,000 in Oakland and tens of thousands more in communities around Northern California. Many media reports called the turnouts “the largest” in this year’s wave of immigrant rights protests. As was true of earlier demonstrations, May 1 was a family day, with babies and toddlers in strollers, older children hand in hand with parents, and teens forming their own contingents.

“You are marching to declare you want our country to live up to its heritage of liberty and justice for all,” Rep. Barbara Lee told demonstrators gathered in front of Oakland’s City Hall. “My ancestors came from Africa in chains — we understand what justice is.”

At a press conference featuring an interracial panel of clergy and leaders of immigrant rights, labor and other community organizations, Lee said immigrant families form the largest caseload her office serves. Noting that “pieces of legislation” now before Congress move in the direction of a fair and just immigration reform, Lee said a comprehensive approach should include a path to citizenship, family reunification, provisions for health care and education, including the Dream Act, and must not criminalize undocumented immigrants. Also, the panel cited the need to speed processing of immigration requests, and to address workers’ rights issues.

Participants were united in opposing HR 4437. “This kind of bill would put us in the position of having to choose between being a Good Samaritan and being a ‘good citizen,’” said the Rev. Kelvin Sauls, senior pastor at Oakland’s Downs Memorial United Methodist Church. Sauls added, “If I am placed in that position, I will be a Good Samaritan.”

Sauls and other panelists also pointed out the need to address special discrimination in the immigration process against people coming from Africa and the Caribbean. Panelists then gathered for a meeting convened by the congresswoman to discuss immigration policy.

In San Francisco, along with “Today we march, tomorrow we vote,” demonstrators carried signs and banners proclaiming, “We fix America, we build America, we paint America, we are not criminals — we are construction workers,” and “You can’t spell USA without US!”

One marcher, an immigrant from Mexico, noted pointedly, “Our taxes aren’t illegal, are they?”

— Marilyn Bechtel

Connecticut: In an unprecedented outpouring, at least 10,000 in Stamford, New Haven and Hartford participated in rallies for immigrant rights as part of the national day of action on May 1. Another 2,000 marched in Danbury on April 30 for legalization. The rallies were supported by unions, churches, elected officials and community organizations. Across the state some businesses closed, others gave a paid day off for immigrants who wanted to participate, and in some cities students stayed out of school for the national boycott.

On the New Haven Green, John Wilhelm, president of the hospitality division of Unite-Here, received a huge cheer when he shouted out, “The work that you do is critical to this country, and when you ask for decent wages, dignity and respect you are told you are a criminal. You are not criminals. You are the future of this country. They can never turn you back.” Wilhelm and John Olsen, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, raised their clasped hands in solidarity on the stage.

After a day of informational workshops organized by Unidad Latina en Accion and performances that were part of the annual May Day celebration on the Green, 4,000 recent immigrants, students, elected officials and allies marched through downtown, bringing traffic to a standstill, shouting “Sí se puede.”

— Joelle Fishman

Texas: The League of United Latin American Citizens led four activities in Dallas on May 1. They began with a spirited noontime rally outside the plush office building that houses Sen. John Cornyn’s office. Cornyn holds the key immigration position in the Senate Judiciary Committee and is on record as favoring “enforcement only” legislation similar to HR 4437 that passed the House in December. Cornyn also held press conferences to undermine the fragile compromise that Senate leaders pinned their hopes on during the last session.

There were about 250 enthusiastic picketers representing several sectors of the Dallas population with the majority being Latinos. They joined the 3,000 American flag-waving people later that afternoon at City Hall, while high school students, who had actually sparked all the protests with big walkouts in late March, rallied in a nearby park.

The last event of the day was a religious vigil at the Kennedy Memorial downtown.

Two major Change to Win unions here, UFCW and Unite Here, distributed remarkable information. They contacted employers and told them that they intended to stand behind any member who chose to march on May 1. They leafleted their members letting them know that the union would help them if they were unfairly victimized for following their conscience on May 1.

In Houston, newspapers reported that 20,000-30,000 marched and targeted Cornyn’s local office. The May 1 turnout was larger than Houston’s April 10 national day of action. What’s important about that is it shows the immigration raids at IFCO, which were larger in Houston than anywhere, did not deter people from coming out on May 1.

— Jim Lane

In Providence, R.I.: May Day here began with a 500-person march organized by SEIU Local 615 and Unite Here Local 217 to bolster support for the contract negotiations of downtown janitors and hotel workers, most of whom are immigrant workers.

The marchers sat down in a busy intersection and blocked morning traffic near the city’s main bus terminal, before picketing both the Westin Hotel and the Providence Place Mall, which are the focus of the labor disputes. The union workers were joined by many youth (the Providence Schools reported a 46 percent absentee rate) and other community allies.

The second event of the day was a midday Mass in the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, where the celebrant blessed the tools of labor — mops, brooms and buckets, and even a picket sign.

By the early afternoon, the typically quiet streets of Providence thundered with the footsteps of the jovial group that grew to a police-estimated size of nearly 20,000 people as the march weaved through the city — easily the largest march in Rhode Island since the Vietnam War.

“We want to be able to breathe the air of freedom,” said Juan Garcia, the organizer of the Immigrants in Action Committee.

And quite suddenly, with millions taking to the streets around the country, it actually seems possible.

¡Sí se puede! Yes, we can!

— Rachel Wallace

Health care struggles sweep Ohio

Fri, 05 May 2006 06:55:00 +0000

As poll numbers for the Republicans who currently rule Ohio continue to drop to record lows, the issue of health care justice is emerging as a key electoral issue in this swing state. A series of struggles for health care justice are developing throughout Ohio.

Thousands of Ohioans are expected at a May 6 demonstration at the Statehouse in Columbus in observance of Cover the Uninsured Week. The focus is on the over 1.3 million Ohioans now without any heath coverage. The sponsoring list for the action has swelled to 83 organizations, including the AFL-CIO, the Steelworkers union, Unite Here, the Autoworkers, the Service Employees union, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, Physicians for National Health Care, the Friends Service Committee, the Democratic Party, many retiree and women’s organizations, as well as the two major organizations driving the health care fight in Ohio — Single Payer Action Network (SPAN) and Universal Health Care Action Network (UHCAN).

This year’s rally will be spurring support for a statewide petition drive organized by the new SPAN organization to place a state single-payer health care program on the ballot. SPAN spokespersons say they have already collected half the signatures needed to achieve ballot status.

The statewide movement has also been building support for HR 676 (Conyers-Kucinich Bill) for a national single-payer health care program. At least four Ohio cities and a county have passed resolutions urging passage of this measure. A half dozen other cities are considering similar motions.

Local struggles for health care justice have also sprung up throughout the state. In Cleveland, a coalition organized by UHCAN and several unions is proposing legislation that would require all hospitals receiving public support in that city to provide free treatment to anyone with an income less than twice the poverty rate. The bill also provides for a sliding scale of discounts for folks making more. The Cleveland City Council is holding public hearings on the need for universal health care. Earlier public hearings sponsored by SPAN and UHCAN were attended by hundreds in the city in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, the Steelworker retirees’ ReUnion Project has set up 16 mass meetings on health care across Ohio. The project seeks to mobilize the thousands of steelworkers, friends and families who retired or lost jobs in the manufacturing crisis of the 1990s. Thousands are expected to attend the meetings, which will include meals and a presentation on the need for health care reform. The meetings are set for Cleveland, Clairton, Columbus, Cincinnati, Lorain, Toledo, Warren, Youngstown, Findley, Sandusky, Woodsville, Canton, Girard, Struthers, Ashtabula and Akron. At the meetings, attendees can sign up for USW activist groups and get involved in health care struggles.

In Lorain, a labor-based coalition including the USW and SEIU is building community support. Over 300 people attended a public hearing to demand that the local publicly supported hospital cease its practice of suing poor folks over medical bills. The movement was successful and the hospital has backed off this practice. The coalition is now working to support SEIU hospital workers in their upcoming contract fight.

In the state capital, ACORN activists launched a successful drive to reform hospital treatment for indigent patients.

The mushrooming health care movement is expected to impact the upcoming statewide elections. Labor-supported candidates Ted Strickland (for governor) and Sherrod Brown (for U.S. Senate), both Democrats, are making support for universal health care central planks in their campaigns.

Meanwhile, GOP fortunes are looking bleak. A recent Cleveland Plain Dealer state poll showed likely voters favoring Democrats to Republicans, 41 percent to 28 percent. While the state moves forward demanding real health care reform, GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell’s troubled campaign is centered on issues of abortion, “gay marriage” and a “Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights” — a state funding gimmick which most even in his own party are already opposing.

Call (440) 396-6707 or (866) 365-2203 toll-free for information on events.

Bruce Bostick (bruce161@centurytel.net) is a 35-year steelworker who works on special projects for the USW.

Taking back Ohio!

Fri, 05 May 2006 06:35:00 +0000

Under the banner headline “Take Back Ohio,” the Ohio AFL-CIO has put in place a 10-zone statewide political structure. The Take Back Ohio political organization, while working in cooperation with the area labor federations, is nevertheless an independent labor political structure dealing solely with working-class issues and endorsed candidates. Each zone covers several county labor federations and has a full-time coordinator, with a person from each local federation assigned to work with the coordinator.

Within each zone, actions are taking place to reach out to the local communities, building coalitions around issues and candidates.

Take Back Ohio took off with a bang on Election Day in November 2005. Unionists talked to voters at polling places then, collecting 50,000 signatures on a petition to raise the minimum wage in Ohio. At a news conference in January, Tim Burga, the state’s AFL-CIO legislative director, announced a “crusade for a revised minimum wage.”

Ohioans for a Fair Minimum Wage, a coalition of the AFL-CIO and nonprofit, community, faith-based, and civil rights organizations, is circulating petitions in union halls, at job sites and at public rallies. Unionists were back at the polls on Primary Day, May 2.

Ohio’s Republican-controlled Legislature is feeling the pressure. After stonewalling all attempts to raise the state’s minimum wage of $4.15 an hour, they suddenly decided to raise it to $5.15, the federal level. But the campaign to raise Ohio’s minimum wage to $6.85 per hour is going full steam ahead.

The state labor movement is supporting a slate of candidates put forward by the Democrat Party. These include Reps. Ted Strickland for governor and Sherrod Brown for U.S. Senate. Both have 100 percent labor voting records in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Town hall meetings held throughout the state by broad coalitions with strong labor support are getting large, enthusiastic turnouts. Campaigns are reaching out to rural and semi-rural districts with support coming from family farmers and people in economically devastated small towns.

The Ohio AFL-CIO is being reorganized under the New Alliance program. The program consolidates all the county federations into seven area labor federations, each of which will have full-time staff, with executive board members assigned from each local group.

The national AFL-CIO, together with other organizations such as America Votes and ACORN, are targeting Ohio with funds and organizers as a state that will be key in deciding the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. They are saying in very strong language: “Take Back Ohio in 2006, and Take Back our Country in 2008!”

Puerto Ricos workers resist govt layoffs

Fri, 05 May 2006 06:19:00 +0000

Marches, picket lines and other demonstrations are shaking Puerto Rico as the colonial administration closed down government agencies and schools, ironically enough, on May 1 — International Workers Day — in response to the island nation’s budget crisis. Up to 100,000 people, over 6 percent of the workforce, are losing their public sector jobs in this country of about 4 million.

Unemployment in Puerto Rico already hovers in the teens.

While the government of Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila and other pro-business sectors are pushing for an additional sales tax to resolve a revenue shortfall, other forces are calling for more taxes on big, mostly U.S., corporations.

How best to find a solution to the crisis, one that benefits working people, has been a source of controversy among some public sector workers. This was evident in the response to an April 19 demonstration initiated by the Association of Commonwealth Employees (AEELA), which called for a 7 percent sales tax. The call for a sales tax prompted several unions and pro-independence groups to withdraw their support for the action.

Although the demands of AEELA echoed those of the government, when the march took place Acevedo Vila deployed police in riot gear to prevent the workers from reaching the Capitol building in San Juan.

Victor Villalba, president of the Central Puertorriqueña de Trabajadores (CPT), a federation of 24 non-AFL-CIO unions in Puerto Rico, issued a statement that said neither the CPT nor the United Coordinating Center of State Workers (CUTE) would support “any sales tax which will aggravate the economic situation of Puerto Rican workers.”

Hector Pesquera, spokesman for the Hostos National Independence Movement (MINH), said it was “unheard of that workers would march in support of imposing a sales tax on themselves as a way to solve a crisis” caused by succeeding colonial administrations.

The MINH called for “not choosing between bad and worse,” referring to a recently passed sales tax of 4 percent and the newly proposed 7 percent figure. The MINH called on the government to instead tax “the $30 billion in profits” that flow from Puerto Rico to the U.S. each year.

Another protest, this one called by several radio and television personalities for April 28 in San Juan, drew about 50,000 people. Mass support for the Puerto Rican Independence Party’s (PIP) proposal to tax corporations rather than workers was clearly evident.

A bill introduced in the Puerto Rican Senate by PIP Sen. Maria Lourdes Santiago would levy an additional 5 percent tax on corporations with profits of $1 million or more during 2005. Santiago said, “This would give the Department of Revenue the necessary flow of funds so that the affected governmental agencies can have solvency for their operations and continue to serve the people of Puerto Rico.”

The additional tax would affect mostly U.S.-based transnational corporations doing business on the island. Fifty-six of the top Fortune 100 corporations have operations in Puerto Rico.

Pesquera of the MINH accused Gov. Acevedo Vila, leader of the autonomist Popular Democratic Party, of giving in to the pro-statehood New Progressive Party and bondholders by proposing the 7 percent sales tax.

He wrote, “The Commonwealth government has a public debt of $40 billion to bondholders. The debt service on this public debt is the highest in the whole [Western] Hemisphere.” He said this means the government “pays $300 million to the bondholders monthly,” or approximately $3.6 billion each year.

Pesquera called for a moratorium on the payment of debt service and using the savings to fund government services that benefit working people, which account for roughly 15 percent of the budget.

“Every 15-day pay period, every month, workers face the dilemma of what to pay now and what to pay later,” he said, saying this time the bondholders — large financial institutions — should bear the brunt of the fiscal crisis.

Connecticut readers to honor newsmakers

Fri, 05 May 2006 05:30:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — “Today we march, tomorrow we vote” is the theme of this year’s celebration and presentation of People’s Weekly World “Newsmaker Awards” on the occasion of International Workers Day.

Held on the first Sunday of May each year, the event will take place on May 7 at 4:30 p.m. at the New Haven People’s Center, 37 Howe Street.

The Connecticut AFL-CIO will accept a Newsmaker Award for its role in unity building within the labor movement among unions of all federations, and for taking a groundbreaking stand against the war on Iraq.

The Winchester Citizens Ad Hoc Committee will accept the award for its ongoing leadership in the fight to save union manufacturing jobs in New Haven’s Newhallville community, after the announcement by US Repeating Arms that it would close despite a tax abatement agreement with the city that is tied to job retention.

For its leadership in the fight to stop privatization of Social Security and Medicare, the Connecticut Alliance of Retired Americans will also accept a Newsmaker Award.

Special recognition will be given to two former award recipients: Unidad Latina en Accion, a grassroots immigrant rights organization, for its contributions to building the new mass movement of immigrants for equality; and Community Organized for Responsible Development (CORD), for winning a Community Benefits Agreement with Yale New Haven Hospital, the first such agreement on the East Coast.

The program includes a multimedia presentation of “May Day Around the World,” a performance by the YCL Rap Group, children’s crafts and a homemade buffet.

Contributions will be accepted for the People’s Weekly World fund drive. For more information call (203) 624-8664.