People Before Profit blog

Laundry workers vow to strike till we win

Fri, 25 May 2007 05:14:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Some 20 laundry workers who have been on strike since last July at Lechner and Sons, a uniform-rental and industrial laundering company in nearby Mount Prospect, Ill., joined with community and labor leaders to hold a press conference in this city’s Little Village neighborhood on May 10, Mexican Mother’s Day.

“We are on strike to fight the exploitation, injustice and discrimination at work and to struggle for our rights until we are treated with respect and dignity,” said Esperanza Munoz, one of the laundry workers.

The workers are members of Local 969 of Unite-Here.

Lechner and Sons left Chicago for the suburbs in 2004. The company did not offer job transfers to longtime employees, but instead required them to reapply for their jobs and take a $4 an hour pay cut.

While the company has continued to succeed and take government subsidies, it has failed to negotiate in good faith with its employees. It has also asked the workers to give up some of their benefits.

The workers are mostly immigrant women who sew, iron and hang uniforms and prepare them for packaging. They have kept up their picket line, including through the cold winter months.

Now they are asking their employer’s clients, like El Milagro Tortilleria, a tortilla and Mexican food restaurant chain, to reflect the values of the communities they serve by not doing business with the company until it returns to good faith negotiations. The press conference was held outside El Milagro’s restaurant and central offices.

James Thindwa, executive director of Chicago Jobs with Justice, said, “As we recognize Mother’s Day, it’s important that we stand by these women workers.”

“We want to remind El Milagro to use discretion about who their vendors are, because it matters,” he said. “This is not an attack on this restaurant; this is an effort to inform this business to stand with these workers.”

Marilu Vargas, a leader of the March 10 Movement, a local immigrant rights coalition, said, “We’re asking El Milagro to help the workers and to ask for their solidarity with our brothers and sisters in this community.”

Other statements of support came from Cuahutemoc Morfin, a recent aldermanic candidate in the 25th Ward; Moises Zavala, a leader of Local 881 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union; and Jorge Ramirez, secretary-treasurer of the Chicago Federation of Labor.

Some of the workers, along with union and community leaders, tried to meet with the owners of El Milagro after the press conference. No one answered the door.

“We are disappointed that we couldn’t speak with folks here today but we will continue to reach out to El Milagro,” said Joe Costigan, treasurer of Unite-Here’s Midwest region. “We will continue to try and educate the community about the injustice these workers face. To the workers, we say: we will fight till we win.”

The workers are urging their supporters to call Lechner and Sons at (800) 479-3525 to tell its management to deal with their employees fairly, to provide them with decent wages and benefits, including health insurance, and to stop trying to take away their rights.

plozano @pww.org

Labor, immigrant rights groups: No two-tier society

Fri, 25 May 2007 04:26:00 +0000

The Senate-White House compromise bill on immigration reform was no sooner submitted than it ran into a storm of opposition.

Thee measure was sharply criticized by key components of the immigrant rights movement. Numerous labor, Latino, civil rights and immigrants rights groups have weighed in on the bill, which is considerably to the right of last year’s McCain-Kennedy bill and the STRIVE bill currently in the House.

Although some advocates are working to amend it, key groups are calling for the bill’s defeat because they say its problems are too many to be remedied by amendments. “The strategic goal here is to kill the White House-Senate bill,” said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the William C. Velazquez Institute.

The bill, S 1348, is the product of negotiations, outside the committee process, among senators from both parties and the Bush administration. At least two weeks for amendments and debate are scheduled.

Eager to retain the anti-immigrant provisions in the bill, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said any major changes proposed by amendment would cause him and other Republicans to withdraw from the agreement. Many right-wing Republicans oppose the bill because it contains some legalization process.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney expressed the view of most of organized labor when he criticized the large guest worker program in the legislation, which would not allow guest workers to petition for a permanent resident visa and access to citizenship.

Guest workers could come for a two-year stint, and then would be forced to go back to their country of origin for a year before coming back for a second stint, then going back for another year and coming in again for a final two-year stint. The workers could only bring family with them if they all have health insurance and the family is 150 percent above the poverty level.

As Sweeney put it, “Without a real path to legalization, the program will exclude millions of workers and thus ensure that America will have two classes of workers, only one of which can exercise workplace rights … [this will] drive down benefits, wages, health and safety protections and other workplace standards.”

The bill would also radically change the process for determining the allocation of permanent resident visas, sharply reducing the number of people brought in on the basis of family relationships and substituting a system of “merit” points which would greatly favor more highly educated immigrants who speak English.

Lillian Rodriguez Lopez, president of the Hispanic Federation, said, “We cannot support the fact that this bill would do away with family reunification categories that Latinos rely on to reunite their families.”

The bill was also sharply criticized by the ACLU and the National Immigration Law Center for restricting the right of immigrants to appeal adverse decisions of immigration authorities and have their day in court.

Even the legalization process for current undocumented immigrants is seriously flawed. Esther Nieves, speaking for the American Friends Service Committee, said, “The proposed legislation does offer a limited path to citizenship, but unreasonable provisions, including lengthy waiting periods, fines, a new ‘merit-based’ system and other punitive hurdles mean that undocumented workers would need to wait for eight to 13 years to become citizens and pay the equivalent of up to six months’ wages.”

On May 22, an amendment to completely remove the guest worker program from the bill was defeated in the House 64-31. On May 23, the Senate voted 74-24 to slash the size of the guest worker program, capping the number of guest workers at 200,000 a year instead of the bill’s 400,000-600,000.

After the first week of debate ending May 25, the Senate will be on a one-week recess. The Senate will reconvene June 4, after which debate on the bill will continue. Labor, civil rights, Latino, religious and other groups are mobilizing visits, letters and phone calls to senators to either defeat the bill or radically amend it to promote immigrant rights.

Rosalio Muñoz contributed to this story.

San Antonio hosts immigration meet

Fri, 18 May 2007 07:18:00 +0000

SAN ANTONIO — Fourteen national leaders of U.S. unions and civic organizations and a member of the Mexican Congress participated in the First International Forum on Immigration here, May 5. It was convened by Jaime Martinez, national treasurer of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), to analyze problems with and propose solutions to the issue that most strongly impacts the Latino community and workers in this country: immigration.

Rosa Rosales, national LULAC president, called for a just and comprehensive immigration reform that unites families and ends the jailing of “268 minor children of immigrants.” She assailed the wall being expanded along the Mexico-U.S. border as “a shameful thing.”

Likewise, Jose Jacques Medina, who represents the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) in the lower house of the Mexican Congress, expressed the unanimous repudiation by Mexico of the “wall of shame which divides our communities.” Along the U.S.-Mexico border, he said, “no bridge has ever been blown up by any Mexican in the 159 years since the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.” On the contrary, he continued, “the immigrants who cross the border have constructed your bridges for you, your roads; we have built your houses.”

United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez denounced the exploitation of farm labor, and warned against the “bracero” temporary worker program that is part of President Bush’s immigration reform proposals.

Dr. Gabriela Lemus, executive director of Labor Council on Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), condemned the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s workplace raids. She deplored the fact that the immigrants detained in such raids are constantly moved to different detention centers, making it almost impossible for their families to see them. Lemus drew attention to the growing political clout of Latinos, noting that they increased their participation in the last elections by 37 percent.

LULAC’s Martinez said immigrant rights groups would soon distribute a card among immigrants informing them what to do in case of a raid. It will instruct immigrants how to speak to immigration agents and provide a national telephone number that could help them to get legal defense.

Emma Lozano of Pueblo sin Fronteras and founder of the United Latino Family organization in Chicago, assailed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), part of the Department of Homeland Security, for its “campaign of hate against Latinos.” She cited the case of Elvira Arellano, who sought sanctuary in a Chicago church, as an act of civil resistance against deportations. Lozano proposed the creation of a rapid response group to help immigrants in emergencies.

Jesus Romo, an activist in the Border Action Network/Accion Fronteriza in Southern Arizona, called for peaceful protests against the Minutemen vigilantes.

Carlos Arango, executive director of Casa Aztlan in Chicago, describe a recent “military operation” carried out in Chicago by immigration agents in which 125 people were detained. It looked like a “little Baghdad,” he said. He urged pressure on Mexico to get its consulates in the U.S. to defend Mexican citizens effectively.

“The most important thing is unity,” Carlos Marentes, of the Committee for a General Amnesty and Social Justice in Seattle, told the World/Nuestro Mundo. The struggle against the war in Iraq and the struggles of African Americans, Native Americans, women and gays and lesbians are not separate movements, he said, adding that the immigrant rights movement should seek the support of “our natural allies.”

At the end of the forum, participants approved a demand that President Bush declare a moratorium on raids and deportations until immigration reform is achieved. They also agreed to call on the U.S. Congress to guarantee that the money which has accumulated in the Social Security fund from the payments of undocumented immigrant workers be used to pay for their legalization as permanent residents.

cedral68 @aol.com

Reality TV producers need a reality check

Fri, 18 May 2007 06:56:00 +0000

Union busting is not new. Corporations with enough money and inclination have employed many dirty tactics to break a union organizing campaign.

However, the tactics being waged against television writers fighting for benefits and membership in the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are unique. Writers who work for shows that fall under the dubiously titled category “Reality TV” have faced an uphill battle in the struggle for labor rights.

The clear shift in the last few years from traditional programs to reality TV programming on major networks is in part due to its cheaper production costs.

Utilizing average people, in search of their 15 minutes of fame, as primary protagonists, the production companies are able to forgo the salaries typically paid to union performers. The companies have also sought to skimp on writers.

However, it is clear that writers play an indispensable role in such productions. They write the script for the host, they frame the story and decide which subjects to focus on in any given episode. Character development and chronology are also part of their role in the show’s development.

This process has been made clearer to the public with the “Survivor” show re-shoots controversy, and other reality show contestants confessing that they were coached during interviews as part of the production.

The reality check here is that reality TV is nothing more than a ploy to keep labor costs down and to keep writers from having a basis to join a union.

Last year, writers on “America’s Top Model,” a show produced by celebrity model Tyra Banks about women competing for a modeling contract, called for a strike to protest being denied the right to join the WGA. They were subsequently fired. They received absolutely no support from Banks herself. The show’s managers used the excuse that reality TV does not fall under the category of other traditional employment for writers.

“Tyra Banks the union buster” is merely the tip of the iceberg in an industry that is systematically stripping away the labor rights of its talent community and trade workers.

The contract negotiations between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers are set for July. It is most likely that the union will demand greater jurisdiction over reality shows. The WGA is known for its militancy.

This struggle continues.

sdelgado @cpusa.org

There comes a time

Fri, 18 May 2007 06:47:00 +0000

Before the ’06 elections, more than a few skeptical voices asked what substantial progress could be achieved through the peoples’ massive get-out-the-vote campaign. We had tried before and failed. Yet after the ballots were counted, even the most cynical admitted that an uncommon opportunity was at hand. There comes a time — when we must seize the opportunity to plant the seeds of real change.

A living wage for all is an essential part of that change. I’ve done a lot of reading lately about a living wage. A concept that sticks in my mind from my studies is that we have a great work ethic in this country — but we have a lousy wage ethic. Hard work does not pay for a decent living. There comes a time — when the economic books must be balanced.

Democracy is the approach. You could say that it’s a promise found in our Constitution. There comes a time — when the American people must take another progressive step.

It is good that we want to fulfill America’s democratic promise. How do we accomplish this task? We can do so by nurturing a majority. We must recognize that the largest party in the United States is not the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party. It’s the party of the unorganized — the unable — the unmoved — the non-participatory — those who play no role in the affairs of the community, workplace, government or other institutions. There comes a time — when we must welcome and enlist the unorganized.

However steely our determination may be, it will not get the job done unless we put together a great army of citizens who want to reconstruct the nation. Those who doubt the necessity of assembling this army of solidarity, or those who meditate that an elite faction can lead us forward to victory, need only observe an isolated body of striking workers doing battle with a large corporation on the picket line, their signs and banners waving as they watch the oblivious world go by. No matter how clever is the union leadership or how brave is the rank and file, the bosses will defeat the strike. There comes a time — when we must heed the lessons of struggle.

Only the working people can fulfill America’s democratic promise. The wealthy may join the movement; they must not be turned away. Nevertheless, change will originate from the workers and their families — the 75 percent who rely upon wages or salary for daily bread. We need not fabricate their grievances, because they are genuine, born at the kitchen table. I say this because the kitchen table is where families pray, eat, talk, laugh, dream and calculate. There comes a time — when we must acknowledge that a real revolution means that there is room for everyone at the table.

I cannot think of a more fundamental grievance than poverty. No one should labor and suffer from want for the basics: food, housing, clothes, transportation, etc. According to recent statistics released by the Economic Policy Institute, about 488,000 people in Illinois go without necessary income for the basics. Only a living wage would provide these things.

If we fail, or if we neglect, to lift up our less fortunate sisters and brothers, then the weight of their misery will surely drag us down. In the book of Proverbs 31:9, it says, “Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and the needy.” There comes a time — when we must realize that the smart way to go is also the caring way.

Tim Mills (timmillsgp@aol.com) is a member of UAW Local 592 in Rockford, Ill., and chair of the rank-and-file Jobs Campaign. He made these remarks at a “living wage coffee talk” hosted by the local Unitarian Church, Rockford Peace & Justice Action Committee and Rockford Urban Ministries, March 19.

EDITORIAL: Let the workers beware

Fri, 18 May 2007 05:44:00 +0000

With the purchase this week of Chrysler Group by Cerberus Capital Management, the proverb “Let the buyer beware” should be replaced with one that reads, “Let the workers beware.”

The fact that Cerberus is run by John Snow, Bush’s former treasury secretary, is unfortunately only one of the reasons autoworkers are now worrying.

Daimler Chrysler, the seller, and Cerberus, the buyer, have both said from the beginning that any deal would have to include major concessions from the union. The 65,000 Chrysler workers, of course, want to see their jobs and benefits protected.

Cerberus, named appropriately after the satanic three-headed hound who guarded the ancient underworld, has a history of “saving” troubled companies but doing so always at the expense of the workers.

If Cerberus lives up to its past it will seek job cuts just like the 13,000 cuts Daimler Chrysler made when it shut a Delaware plant last February.

If Cerberus lives up to its past it will pressure the union to make substantial cuts affecting its present workers and it will go after prescription and health benefits for the 84,000 retirees now covered.

If Cerberus gets its way, autoworkers at Ford and GM face a huge battle when their contracts expire this fall.

Let the workers beware!

Art Shields: Labors great reporter

Fri, 18 May 2007 05:25:00 +0000

Art Shields was the Daily Worker’s greatest labor reporter. I got to know Art and his wife Esther, herself a labor journalist, soon after I joined the staff of the Worker in January 1967. Art helped me hone my writing skills. He was a role model in his loyalty to workers and their struggles. A tall, lean, strikingly handsome man, he was quiet spoken and modest to a fault. But he was also a superb storyteller.

To write this appreciation, I relied on my personal memories, an interview with steelworker George Edwards, one of Art’s close friends, and a re-reading of Art’s remarkable two-volume autobiography, “My Shaping Up Years” and “Battle Lines: 1919-1939.”

Telling labor’s untold story

Art was born in Barbados in October 1888, son of a Moravian church preacher. He tells of his first encounters with socialism, hearing Jack London speak at his York, Pa., high school. A year later, Art was working in a machine shop, and a fellow worker urged him to become a socialist.

Art was an early convert to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He traveled widely, immersing himself in the class struggle wherever he went. This hobo spirit permeates Art’s writing as it did much of working-class culture in those days. Workers were moving restlessly across the nation seeking work in factories, mines, transportation and agriculture. It was a time of rising class consciousness. A spirit of defiance, a confidence that ordinary women and men can change the world, animated the movement in those years. Even in the face of the darkest, most brutal repression, workers, united, were invincible.

1919: Revolution in Seattle

That spirit reached a new high when the Russian Revolution erupted in 1917. Art was in Nome, Alaska, drawn by the Gold Rush. Nome was a hotbed of IWW radicalism, and he and his fellow workers convened a rally to celebrate the storming of the Winter Palace. Art never wavered in his solidarity with the world’s first socialist country.

Two years later, Art was in Seattle. The First World War was still raging and he joined the Army, not to fight in Europe, but to organize antiwar resistance from within as Bolsheviks had done so successfully in Russia. He was felled by the great flu pandemic, which killed two of his brothers and nearly killed him. He was mustered out of the Army.

Art found work as a lathe operator at a shipyard in Seattle. He came to the Machinists Union hall one day in his Army uniform. The lodge president recruited him to deliver a speech calling for a general strike and urging the thousands of Army veterans to support it. Art wrote a leaflet calling for the strike. Twenty thousand were distributed under the slogan, “Together We Win.”

The Seattle General Strike of 1919 idled the city for five days. “Seattle became the quietest city in the United States,” he wrote, “the first mass demonstration of interracial unity I had seen.” In this case it was not white, Black and Latino workers who gave it the strength of racial unity, but rather Japanese American and white workers who threw their full support to the mass walkout.

IWW leaders of the strike hoped it would spread into a nationwide general strike demanding freedom for labor frame-up victims Tom Mooney and Warren K. Billings. About this same time, Seattle dockworkers refused to load a ship carrying weapons for Kolchak’s counter-revolutionary army in Siberia. It showed just how deep support for the Russian Revolution was among workers. The strike ended with important gains for workers in the Pacific Northwest.

Save Sacco and Vanzetti!

Art traveled back to New York City in 1920. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, head of the Worker’s Defense Union, asked him to start a publicity campaign to save Sacco and Vanzetti. He went with a young African American attorney, William L. Patterson, to Boston. Art interviewed the two defendants in prison and wrote a pamphlet, “Are they Doomed?”

Vanzetti, an Italian-immigrant fishmonger, was going door to door selling fish the day an armored car was held up 20 miles away. Several guards were killed in the incident. Shields retraced Vanzetti’s steps, interviewing customers who fully corroborated his alibi. But the ruling class was determined to send a message to the growing left-wing workers’ movement, and the two were executed, martyrs of A. Mitchell Palmer’s “Red Scare.”

The Sacco and Vanzetti frame up is echoed today in the ultra rights drive to criminalize immigrant workers and conversely the struggle by the AFL-CIO and other labor and progressive forces to win legalization for undocumented workers and full workplace and civil rights for all immigrant workers.

As a reporter for the labor-based Federated Press, Art was assigned to West Virginia to cover the 1921 coal miners’ strike. He reported on the trial of miners arrested in Matewan following the murder of pro-miner Sheriff Sid Hatfield by Baldwin Felts gun thugs. That massacre triggered the “Battle of Blair Mountain,” when 5,000 coal miners attempted to march into Mingo County to organize the miners. Five thousand Baldwin-Felts gun thugs, dug in on Blair Mountain, attempted to block their way. The mine owners even used planes to drop crude bombs on the advancing miners.

The miners were winning until President Warren Harding sent 2,000 U.S. troops. Billy Mitchell, commander of the Army Air Corps, had readied 13 Army planes with gas bombs and fragmentation bombs to drop on the miners if they did not halt their advance.

That rather incredible chapter in American history was largely forgotten until West Virginia mine owners recently attempted to decapitate the crest of Blair Mountain in their crazed “mountaintop removal” mining method. So far, a determined fight-back has saved Blair Mountain.

Which side are you on?

In Appalachia, Art’s love of industrial workers, especially coal miners, reached full flower. He was entranced by the beauty of the mountains and with the culture of the people. Among his dearest friends were Florence Reece, who wrote the immortal “Which Side Are You On,” the mountaineer poet Don West, and George Meyers, son of a coal miner from Lonaconing, Md. George later became president of the Maryland-D.C. Congress of Industrial Organizations. Later, George became a much-loved chairman of the Labor Commission of the Communist Party USA. Art and George traveled together in Appalachia many times together.

In 1924, Art joined the staff of the Daily Worker. He was one of many Worker correspondents who chronicled the organizing of the mass production industries by the CIO during the 1930s. He interviewed United Mine Worker President John L. Lewis, Steelworker President Phil Murray and other top leaders of the CIO. He covered the founding convention of the CIO.

But his greatest admiration was for rank-and-file workers, some of them Communists, like coal miners Tom Myerscough and Pat Touhy, who saved the United Mineworkers in 1921 by organizing the miners who dug the coking coal for U.S. Steel’s mills in Western Pennsylvania; the intrepid Ben Carreathers, the African American organizer who outwitted the steel barons in signing up thousands of steelworkers under the noses of corporate security in Aliquippa, Pa.; and Paddy Whalen, the National Maritime Union organizer who led a maritime strike that idled Baltimore. (Whalen later died in the engine room of a ship torpedoed by the Nazis in World War II.) And his closest friend of all, George Meyers.

To die in Madrid

In 1939, Art arrived in Madrid to cover the last stand of the Spanish Republic. Art was arrested and thrown into a fascist dungeon. He barely escaped when he tricked his captors into taking him to the U.S. Embassy. Art broke free and lunged through the gate into the Embassy compound. Art reports that he staggered up the stairs of the Embassy. Who should he meet? Joseph Kennedy Jr., son of the U.S. Ambassador in London. Art was exhausted, but Kennedy wanted to talk politics. Why, he demanded, do Bolsheviks “believe in the inevitability of a bloody revolution, while the socialists do not?” Art answered that the fascists, not the Communists, instigated the bloodletting in Spain. Joe Kennedy, himself, died in the war. Art escaped from Spain and continued writing for another 44 years. He died in his 90s.

In Art Shield’s youth, a working-class upsurge rolled like a huge wave around the world. Art dove into that wave and swam with it, joyfully, the rest of his life.

Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees leader George Edwards, a close friend of Art, told me, “Art not only swam with that wave, he influenced it. He not only reported on the struggles, he participated in them.”

Art was a proud member of the Communist Party USA. He loved the richly diverse membership: workers, men and women, of many races and nationalities. Art knew he owed those members: They distributed hundreds of thousands of the Worker featuring his stories at shop gates and in communities.

Keeping the faith

We continue to do that today with the People’s Weekly World. We work hard to carry on Art’s legacy. That pro-worker “bias” came home to me last night while watching Bill Moyers’ Journal on public television, a scathing exposé of the corporate media’s shameful support for George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. They peddled the lies, including Colin Powell’s mendacious speech to the United Nations. And what was our headline for the PWW distributed to the huge antiwar demonstration near the UN that frigid February day in 2003? “Powell at UN Caught in Web of Lies.” Art would have been proud!

In geologic time, we are still shaking off decades of Cold War retreat and “class partnership” nonsense. Yet a new wave, greater than ever, is gathering force. Labor is in the center of that new upsurge. Our goal in the 2008 elections must be a landslide victory, a new political realignment that ousts the Republican right. If Art were alive today, he would be swimming in the mainstream of that mighty new wave of workers’ struggles.

Tim Wheeler (greenerpastures21212 @yahoo.com) is the national political correspondent of the People’s Weekly World. The article is based on a speech delivered at the third Labor’s Voices conference last month in New York City.

Special thanks to Sandy Polishuk for inviting Tim Wheeler to participate in the Labor’s Voices panel. Polishuk is the author of “Sticking to the Union: An Oral History of the Life and Times of Julia Ruuttila.” Ruuttila exposed in the pages of the West Coast People’s World the racist, anti-working class response to the Vanport flood in September 1948, when the levees on the Columbia River broke and a town of 20,000 was inundated by a 20-foot wall of water. The survivors were treated similarly as the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina.

Sago Mine families slam govt findings

Fri, 18 May 2007 05:09:00 +0000

PITTSBURGH — “I can’t tell where the coal company ends and MSHA begins,” Deborah Hamner told the Charleston Gazette after a five-hour meeting with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration in which the agency released its findings on the 2006 Sago Mine disaster.

Hamner’s husband, George Junior Hamner, died in the disaster.

After a 16-month investigation, the agency concluded that the initial explosion at the Sago Mine was “most likely” caused by a lightening strike that ignited methane gas.

The explosion trapped 13 miners underground for 40 hours. Only one, Randall McCloy Jr., survived.

MSHA found the International Coal Group (ICG), owners of Sago mine, broke 149 mine safety laws contributing to the disaster. MSHA did not cite or fine ICG.

“I think it’s horrible that International Coal Group is not going to be cited for anything,” said Pam Campbell, sister-in-law of Sago miner Marty Bennett. “It’s unbelievable.”

Dr. Donna Spadaro, an oncologist and Western Pennsylvania worker health and safety leader whose brother died in an industrial accident, was furious. “How insulting to these families and all workers,” she told the World.

Richard Stickler was appointed by President Bush to lead MSHA. Stickler was a coal operator who headed up Beth Energy’s (Bethlehem Steel) Boone County, W.Va., operations.

“Stickler and MSHA are the tools of corporate greed and the mining industry,” Spadaro said. “One would be a fool to think that justice for workers is possible under this system. I speak from personal experience as OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] did the same thing in my brother’s death.”

The United Mine Workers union and the Sago families believe too much attention has been paid to the purported cause of the explosion, the lightning strike, and not enough to the conditions created by ICG at the Sago Mine, specifically the 149 safety violations.

The media are “so focused on the lightning issue that they have pushed everything else aside,” said Campbell.

“Twelve men are dead today who should not be,” said UMWA President Cecil Roberts. “Their deaths came as the result of a series of bad decisions made by the company and the federal mine safety regulatory agency. Knowing how the methane ignited is important, but it is not really material to the subsequent deaths of the miners. The fact is that the conditions at the mine at the time of the ignition caused these 12 tragic deaths. This tragedy was preventable and should never have occurred.”

Even MSHA Director Stickler said, “I would conclude safety was not a top priority at this operation.” In 2005, ICG was cited for 208 safety violations and had an accident rate double the national average.

What happens next is muddled. Clearly, the Sago families, who have Sago stickers on their cars and trucks and have stayed with the struggle for miners’ safety for over a year, aren’t going away. The UMWA is on Capitol Hill and in the halls of state legislatures, fighting for enforcement of existing federal and state legislation and strengthening the laws. The union is also busy organizing miners into the union.

In an editorial, the Louisville Courier Journal called for stopping coal production if there is a threat of an electrical storm. “If lightning really can do what the MSHA report suggests, then clearly underground operations should be halted and miners brought outside any time bad storms move through the area.”

dwinebr696 @aol.com

Auto company CEOs rolling in dough

Fri, 18 May 2007 04:53:00 +0000

DETROIT — If there is a crisis in the auto industry, it certainly cannot be seen when looking at the compensation of its top management. While autoworkers are being laid off, seeing their plants close and being pressured to grant health care and work rule concessions, those they work for are going in an opposite direction.

A Detroit Free Press analysis of the pay and compensation of 80 top CEOs at Ford, GM and 12 auto suppliers found their pay averaged $4.2 million in 2006. Total compensation for these executives rose 22 percent from 2005, when the average compensation was $3.5 million.

While Ford’s “The Way Forward” plan announced in 2006 will close 16 plants and eliminate 44,000 workers by 2009, its chief executive Alan Mulally was at the top of the compensation list with a total package of $39.1 million.

Although GM lost $2 billion in 2006 and is closing 12 plants and slashing 34,000 jobs, its chairman Rick Wagoner received $9.6 million in total compensation, a 75 percent pay raise from 2005.

Even more striking are the termination clauses many of the executives have. While workers receive a pink slip, auto executives get “golden parachutes.” These can vary from $71 million for Federal-Mogul’s Jose Alapont and $56 million for American Axle’s Alexander Cutler to $27 million for Ford’s Mulally and Visteon’s Michael Johnston.

One problem with executive termination clauses is that CEOs are “rewarded” when they lose their job through a change in control of the company — which they can help bring about — thus creating a conflict of interest that can influence them to make deals not in the interest of the company or workers.

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger told the Free Press in a statement: “During a period of plant closings, employment reductions, and other painful changes for workers and communities, it’s fair to ask whether executives are truly adding value in proportion to any compensation increases they have received.”

Come September, the UAW’s contracts with Chrysler, GM and Ford expire. The auto companies have indicated they will be expecting more sacrifices from the workers, which, if agreed to, will only increase the gap between executive and worker pay.

jrummel @pww.org

Houston school workers demand fair pay

Fri, 18 May 2007 04:51:00 +0000

HOUSTON — On May 10 at least 30 labor supporters gathered outside the School District’s administration building here to support the teachers union’s demand for higher salaries for education workers.

Local 6315 of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents education workers who are not teachers, wants the Houston School District to conduct a survey to compare salaries its members earn with salaries of workers in comparable positions around the country. The union wants both the pay and incentive system to be restructured, because under the present set-up, educational support workers have no seniority system.

Richard Shaw, secretary-treasurer of the Harris County AFL-CIO, was present and led the participants in chants of “What do we want? Fair wages! When do we want it? Right now!” Also present Gerry Birnberg, chairman of the Harris County Democratic Party and Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers.

The crowd was ethnically diverse and included women and men. Unions represented included the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Sheet Metal Workers and the United Auto Workers.

The demands of the education workers have been presented to school Superintendent Abe Saavedra. It has been reported that Saavedra was hired with a contract that included a starting base salary of $270,000, a $60,000 bonus if student performance improves, a $1,200 monthly cash car allowance and a $400 monthly cash allowance for cell phones. His wages and benefits, therefore, total $384,200 per year.

A truck driver working for the school district told this reporter that he had recently been laid off and was trying to get his job back. Asked if he is a union member, he said, “Yes. That’s the only place I get any support. If I wasn’t with the union, I’d just be out there by myself.”

A union organizer said the reason for the picket line was to improve the wages of all educational support personnel. She pointed out that wages for these workers in Houston have lagged behind the rest of the nation.

One union member said that when wages for some workers are raised, all working people benefit. He noted, however, that when things are done to benefit the wealthy, working people suffer.

phill2 @houston.rr.com

Labor takes on global fight vs. climate change

Fri, 18 May 2007 03:55:00 +0000

NEW YORK — Climate change is a labor issue. A large and growing section of world labor now agrees that fighting global warming and building sustainable economies with good jobs for workers go hand in hand.

“Don’t think this will come about without a fight. It will be the defining struggle about the future direction of the global economy,” Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers (USW), told an unprecedented North American Labor Assembly on Climate Crisis here last week.

Ten U.S. international unions and Cornell University sponsored the May 7-8 meeting. Over 200 trade union activists from around the U.S., Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean joined scores of environmental and community activists in the two-day conference, held at the United Federation of Teachers headquarters and conference center. It was also attended by an additional 50 trade union and environmental activists from elsewhere around the globe.

The conference was part of a remarkable series of labor conferences taking place around the world on climate change. The series began with the First Global Trade Union Assembly on Labor and the Environment in Nairobi, Kenya, in January 2006. Next were regional trade union conferences in San Paulo, Brazil, and in Johannesburg, South Africa, also in 2006.

A central theme throughout this North American conference was the importance of global labor initiatives and alliances with environmental movements. Dave Foster, executive director of the Blue Green Alliance, a partnership of the USW and the Sierra Club, spoke about their experiences. Foster, a former district director of the Steelworkers, said the Blue Green Alliance is just a beginning, a core around which they hope to help build global blue/green coalitions that can challenge transnational corporations on climate change, unfair trade and sustainable development.

A wide variety of speakers from labor and the environmental movement participated in a string of interesting roundtable discussions on a broad spectrum of topics, including “Can Green Jobs Drive Reindustrialization,” “Energy Efficient Buildings and Job Creation: A Strategy for Union Growth” and “Beyond Kyoto: How Can Labor Shape the Next Global Agreement?” Many speakers blasted the Bush administration for government inaction and denial on climate issues and for the war in Iraq, calling it “one of the greatest environmental disasters of our time.”

In that light Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), in a plenary keynote, warned of “new wars over scarce global resources that only bold action can stop.” Sanders argued for the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act that he introduced with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

Roger Toussaint, president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union in New York, spoke of the need for greener mass transit. He also strongly argued that climate change is a racial and class issue. “Pollution runs downhill,” he said.

Toussaint warned against too much emphasis on individual solutions. “Yes, we must all do our part, but it is basically a political and policy struggle,” he said. “Workers and the poor have the least ability to make personal green choices. Yet we suffer the greatest impact.”

Toussaint added that strong unions, not good intentions, are among the best ways to regulate business. “Capital has ways of using these issues to their own ends,” he said.

scott @rednet.org

Safety cuts put friendly skies at risk, United workers say

Fri, 18 May 2007 03:46:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Question: Who would order the captain of a 767 jet, loaded with passengers and crew, to take off with a split in one of its tires?

Answer: Glenn Tilton, chairman and CEO of United Airlines.

While Tilton bragged about his once bankrupt airline’s “rebirth” May 10 at the first shareholders’ meeting since 2002, many of the 1,000 pilots, flight attendants and mechanics who demonstrated outside the meeting here related horror stories like the one above.

“I’m angry because under bankruptcy we took a 60 percent cut in wages, health and retirement benefits,” said Sara Nelson, a Washington, D.C.-based flight attendant who stepped off the picket line to talk with the World.

“I am angry,” she said, “because we got nothing while Tilton raised his own salary and compensation from $700,000 a year to $39 million.

“I am angry,” she repeated, “because the cutbacks hurt us all. I feel awful about having to serve passengers with poor equipment on planes that are filthy and, frankly, dangerous.”

Danger to both flight crews and passengers was on the mind of many of the airline workers.

“They tried to fire me last year,” union mechanic Brian McKeever told the World, “when I tried to stop a fully loaded passenger plane from taking off because it had a split in one of its tires. The plane was not one of the ones we were supposed to inspect. Tilton put in rules that cap at 50 percent the number of flights we are allowed to inspect at takeoff.

“Those same rules actually cut it way below 50 percent, because he told us not to inspect planes if there was no trouble of any kind reported on the prior flight,” he said. “We used to do nose-to-tail inspections of every plane before it took off.”

McKeever noted that last year United sought and got a federal court order to prevent the union from inspecting more than the 50 percent of takeoffs allowed.

He has subsequently been elected vice president of Local 9 of the Aircraft Mechanics Union. “It is now the official policy of this union,” he declared, “to refuse to sign off on any document that testifies to the flight-worthiness of any UAL flights. We used to sign off on every single flight.”

Among the demonstrators was Herbert Hunter, the Seattle-based pilot who had flown the plane with the split tire.

Hunter was holding a sign that read, “Management feeds from the trough. Labor gets the scraps.” He said, “We are skilled pilots and we know how to compensate for problems but we should never be asked to put our passengers or crew in danger. This is an issue of safety, an issue of fairness and an issue of equity.

“This company survived bankruptcy because many thousands of workers made sacrifices,” he said. “The sacrifice of the workers yielded some pretty big rewards — but all for the executives. The workers got nothing and the public got dirty and dangerous planes.”

This reporter caught Tilton as he tried to slip unnoticed into a service entrance used moments earlier by a catering company. Asked if he was trying to avoid hundreds of pilots, attendants and mechanics assembling on the other side of the building, Tilton said, “We’ve come out of bankruptcy and that’s great for all of our employees.”

Asked how he reconciled the gap between $39 million in compensation hikes for himself with a zero increase for the workers, he said, “You must be from a labor paper,” and closed the door.

Learning that Tilton had just entered the building, flight attendants who were the first to begin picketing began chanting, “Tilton’s Golden Rule: I make the rules. I take the gold.”

The airline workers reached out for and got support from other segments of the labor movement. The plumbers’ union allowed them to use their hall to assemble and plan for the demonstration.

The event brought together for the first time three major unions representing airline workers, in a spirited mass action. It was a signal to management not to expect workers and their unions to bear the cost of corporate mismanagement.

“This is only the beginning for us,” Sara Nelson, the flight attendant, told the World. “There will be many more actions from now on.”

Only the week before, her union had lobbied in Washington, joining many other unions, demanding congressional action to curb corporate abuse of workers.

UAL lost $10 billion from 2000 until last year, when it returned to profitability with gains in the second and third quarters. It posted $100 million in losses in the last quarter. “Unacceptable!” said Terry O’Rourke, another airline mechanic who was walking the picket line. “These so-called losses are the result of a combination of greed and incompetence. The workers are tired of paying for this.”

O’Rourke continued: “Outsourcing maintenance and production of parts, endangering the flying public, taking $45 billion in concessions from workers, giving the CEO more than a 3,500 percent wage hike and giving the workers nothing — that’s no way to run an airline.”

jwojcik @pww.org

Undue influence: Wal-mart, Google, GE press China to curb workers rights

Fri, 11 May 2007 05:41:00 +0000

There is a “tug of war” raging worldwide over reforms in China’s labor law, according to Brendan Smith, Tim Costello and Jerry Brecher, authors of a report released April 5 by Global Labor Strategies (GLS).

On one side of the battle, the report says, is Wal-Mart, Google, General Electric and other transnational corporations that have been lobbying to limit rights for Chinese workers. On the other side are workers’ rights forces in China, including the country’s official laber organization, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), and labor and human rights groups in the U.S. and around the world.

Chinese scholar and labor lawyer Liu Cheng, a lifelong supporter of the Chinese government who can by no means be classified as a “dissident,” flew to Washington in early April to win support from U.S. congressional representatives and labor leaders for a law that is pending before the National People’s Congress in China. He helped draft the measure.

Essentially, he told everyone he met in Washington that without support from labor backers outside China, some representatives in the National People’s Congress, under the influence of the transnational corporate lobby, might push for concessions in favor of the employers.

Unfortunately, events of the last year show that his fears are based in fact.

Business undermines unions’ role

In March 2006, the Chinese government, with broad popular support, proposed changes in labor law with significant increases in workers’ rights. The American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai (AmCham), the United States China Business Council, Wal-Mart, General Electric and even Google immediately went on the offensive. There are reports that Wal-Mart and General Electric threatened to pack their bags for Pakistan and Thailand if the proposed reforms became law.

Nine months later the Chinese government put out revisions of its original proposal that reduced some of the contractual, collective bargaining and severance rights that were featured in the first proposal.

The transnational corporate and big business operatives in China openly claimed credit for the changes.

“We have enough investment at stake that we can usually get someone to listen to us if we are passionate about an issue,” Scot Slipy, Microsoft’s director of human resources in China, explained to a reporter from Business Week last year.

The changes made by the Chinese government in its original draft proposals are a “significant improvement,” declared the U.S.-China Business Council last December.

According to the GLS report, a lawyer representing numerous corporations in China recently said, “Comments from the business community appear to have had an impact. Whereas the March 2006 draft offered a substantial increase in the protection for employees and a greater role for unions than existing law, the new draft scaled back protections for employees and sharply curtailed the role of unions.”

Give an inch to corporations …

China is apparently learning that once you make concessions to big business they immediately demand more. The transnational corporations have launched a major new effort to further gut the legislation before it becomes law later this spring.

The U.S.-China Business Council has written to the Chinese government describing parts of the revised draft as “burdensome” and “prohibitively expensive,” saying they will have “an adverse impact on the productivity and economic viability of employers.

“We will have to wait until the final draft is written and see how the law will be implemented,” the council says. “If the law is too negative for employers, then we might see a slowdown of recruitment.”

For every action …

Whenever and wherever big business goes on the attack, however, the working class and its allies can be counted on to fight back. This is no less true in this situation.

The ACFTU has taken a strong stand against the corporate pressure. The Chinese labor federation has been fighting efforts by companies to restrict the role of unions in setting new labor policies. Xie Langmin, vice director of the federation’s law department, publicly criticized both the U.S. and European Union Chambers of Commerce for issuing threats as the draft law moves through the legislative process. He told the South China Morning Post, “It is excessive to intervene in a country’s law making process by threatening to withdraw investment.”

Outside China, international union federations have pressured their employers to reverse course on this issue and human rights groups have mobilized support for the rights of Chinese workers.

On Dec. 8, shortly after the 2006 elections in the U.S., Reps. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), George Miller (D-Calif.), Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and 28 other members of the House introduced legislation calling upon the president to publicly express support for the rights of Chinese workers and the protection provisions of China’s draft labor law and to repudiate efforts by U.S. corporations to limit new rights for Chinese workers. Their move was important because it properly placed emphasis on the role of transnational corporations in China rather than simply bashing the whole idea of trade with China. Their move was important also because it was part of a broader effort to take policy-making initiative away from a notoriously anti-labor administration in Washington.

Fight-back shows results

The fight-back both inside and outside China has begun to show results on several levels.

First, it has begun to fracture the unity of U.S.- and European Union-based corporations in China.

AmCham is meeting resistance to its position now from some of its own most powerful members. Nike has repudiated the American Chamber of Commerce, with Nike Vice President Hannah Jones saying, “Nike has a long history of actively supporting the Chinese government’s efforts to strengthen labor laws and protections of workers’ rights. When AmCham took its position Nike had yet definitely to state a position on the draft labor law.”

The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China had initially warned that the Chinese government’s attempt to reform labor law might cause foreign corporations to disinvest in China, but under pressure from human rights and labor groups it has now issued a stunning “clarification” welcoming the law.

Unions unite vs. ‘global sweatshop lobby’

The fight-back has had a second effect on a potentially even more significant level. It has opened the way for unions in the United States and around the world not simply to oppose trade with China, but to fight in a concrete way what one international labor federation, according to the GLS report, calls the “global sweatshop lobby.”

The report makes some important points in this regard.

The emergence of China as a global economic powerhouse poses challenges for workers everywhere, particularly now that 25 percent of the global workforce is Chinese. This means that the global norm for wages and working standards will be increasingly set by China. Hard-won gains of workers in developed countries are undermined and aspirations of workers in developing countries are dashed as China becomes the wage setting country in many industries.

The report points out that simply attacking China or the idea of trade with China fails to address the role of transnational global corporations in a global economy. Two-thirds of the increase in Chinese exports in the last 12 years are from non-Chinese owned global companies. Foreign-owned global transnationals account for 60 percent of Chinese exports to the United States.

‘China bashing’ leads to dead end

The “Chinese threat,” then, is less about trade with China than it is about trade with Wal-Mart and GE. Global transnationals move to China to lower labor costs and then they use those lower labor costs as a lever to drive down wages and working conditions for workers in other countries. Corporate meddling as China moves to reform its labor law is so dangerous because failure to raise standards in China, the home of 25 percent of the world’s working class, will have a devastating effect worldwide.

The report comes to an impressive conclusion:

“China bashing” does not provide a solution for either workers or governments that are trying to come to terms with the impact of China in the global economy. In contrast, trying to reverse the role of U.S. corporations and their “sweatshop lobby” in perpetuating poverty and poor working conditions in China is providing a straightforward, concrete way that workers and their union and political representatives in the U.S. and around the world can help improve the conditions of workers in China. For that reason it is emerging as a central issue in both the labor and political arenas.

John Wojcik (jwojcik @pww.org) is labor editor at the People’s Weekly World.

“Undue influence: Corporations gain ground in battle over China’s new labor law” was issued recently by Global Labor Strategies (GLS), a resource center on globalization, trade and labor issues. GLS, which has offices in New York, Boston and Montevideo, Uruguay, produced the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary video “Global Village or Global Pillage?”

Fast food … but low pay

American fast food giants including McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut have been accused of underpaying staff at their stores in China.

The accusations against the companies have been made by the Federation of Trade Unions of Shanxi Province, which claims Chinese workers at the company were being paid salaries below the lowest standard set by the government.

Wang Hauping, a reporter for the New Express newspaper in China, received calls from part-time workers at the three companies claiming they were paid wages that were well below the minimums set by the provincial government.

Hauping did an investigative report and found that McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut were paying 4, 4.7 and 5.8 yuan an hour, respectively. The minimum wage set by the government in that province is 7.6 yuan an hour.

Under the law, part-time workers are not allowed to work more than five hours per day or 30 hours per week. In reality, McDonald’s is forcing part-timers to work 13 hours a day, with no additional compensation, according to Hauping’s report.

Health care is our right

Fri, 11 May 2007 05:36:00 +0000

HARTFORD, Conn.— Over 5,000 protesters came to the state capital, May 5, to decry lack of health care for 400,000 people in Connecticut and to demand that the Legislature act now to provide health care for all.

Rallying in the shadow of the gilded Capitol dome, the crowd, swelled by thousands of union members, cheered as AFL-CIO President John Olsen said, “We’re going to continue to let those legislators know it’s a moral right, and we’re going to fight for health care now!”

Olsen gestured toward the office towers of Hartford-based insurance companies in the distance and quipped, “I feel we are standing in the Valley of Greed … but I’m proud and honored to represent AFL-CIO workers, all hardworking, honest people who want health care.”

Juan Figueroa, president of the Universal Health Care Foundation, said, “Our governor and Legislature need to act now. Get it done!” The crowd picked up the chant, “Get it done!”

The Legislature, which has a veto-proof Democratic majority this year, adjourns on June 6. Language for the health care bill is still being written. The rally reflected strong pressure from all sectors of the state to enact single-payer health care instead of a piecemeal solution.

The crowd was a rainbow of races and nationalities, women and men from across the state who rode scores of school buses from Bridgeport, Waterbury, New Haven and many other towns. Erica Maldonado, a factory worker, riding a bus from New Haven, told journalist Melissa Bailey that she has to choose between paying health insurance or rent. She chooses rent, so she and her husband are uninsured.

Kevin Brown, his voice rising in anger, told the rally he was forced to “ante up” between $10,000 and $12,000 a year for health insurance, moving from one provider to another. “Our premiums covered less and less as they went higher and higher,” he said. “Now we have insurance with an $8,000 deductible, catastrophic coverage only, paying a staggering amount that does absolutely nothing for us. I’m incensed that at the age of 60, I can’t even think about retiring because I must work to pay for health care. I’m incensed that my government has done nothing to stem the tide of a steamroller medical insurance industry.”

In a fiery speech, the Rev. Jose Champagne, pastor of Iglesias de Dios de la Profecia in New Haven, said he spoke for thousands of uninsured, including immigrant workers. “It’s a shame that 48 million people don’t have primary care,” he said. “The time is now for universal health care. We can’t wait one more day!”

Dan Livingston, a labor lawyer whose father helped found the health and hospital union Local 1199, charged, “One hundred Americans die each day because they lack health care. The defenders of the status quo said the ‘market’ will make things better. Are they going to keep that promise?” The crowd roared, “No!”

Gene Lacobeli, a 42-year food service worker, stood in the crowd holding a “Yale Retirees” banner. “Thanks to the union, Unite Here Local 35, we were able to negotiate a good health plan,” he told the World. “We need universal care to protect the low-wage workers who don’t have it. We have to gather together to fight for benefits for all.”

John Murphy, leader of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, said, “What we really need is single-payer, universal protection that is not employer-based, ultimately, with the federal government having a role. Our budget priorities are screwed up. That’s the reason we formed Connecticut Opposed to the War.”

Jon Green, chair of the Connecticut Working Families Party, said, “In states like Connecticut and New York, there is a growing movement to push for a single-payer, ‘Medicare for All’ solution … that recognizes the role of government in providing health care as a basic right. We’re against things like ‘premium assistance’ or ‘health savings accounts,’ any expectation that the private insurance industry is going to be the solution.”

The Communist Party of Connecticut brought many members and friends from across the state. They passed out a thousand copies of the CPUSA pamphlet “Take it Back to the Grassroots,” which includes a strong call for passage of the Medicare for All Act, HR 676.

Joelle Fishman, the state party’s chair, said, “In Connecticut, as in many states, the top issue is addressing the health care crisis that has skyrocketed as right-wing Republicans in Congress have blocked a national solution while spending huge sums on the war in Iraq.”

greenerpastures21212 @yahoo.com

Police attack May Day marchers in Istanbul

Fri, 11 May 2007 05:01:00 +0000

A vicious attack was launched against this year’s May Day demonstrators in Istanbul, Turkey, as they were gathering to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Taksim Square May Day massacre.

Riot police arrested more than 1,000 workers, among them 500-plus Communist Party members and trade union leaders. Hundreds were badly injured as police used tear gas, chemical sprays, water cannons, clubs, armored vehicles and helicopters in a brutal display of force.

Kemal Okuyan, general secretary of the Communist Party of Turkey, said, “If we hadn’t remained calm and under control, we would have scores of dead now.”

Tens of thousands of demonstrators from all over Turkey had massed in Istanbul to mark the anniversary of the 1977 May Day massacre, in which 36 workers were killed by CIA-backed Turkish security forces. Because of this year’s police violence, however, only 300 managed to make it to the square and lay red carnations where the 36 were killed.

The mobilization of left parties and unions for May Day was met with repression from the outset. The Islamist governor of Istanbul, Mouamer Guiller, had “prohibited” the demonstration, despite repeated requests by all the parties organizing the remembrance. The government took every measure possible to ensure that all forms of mass transport were closed down so working people would be prevented from reaching the rally.

Police blockades were set up at the ports and major highways leading into the city. Buses of demonstrators arriving from other cities were turned back. Snipers were stationed on rooftops and police freely opened fire into the air to disperse crowds. The police blocked all television crews from setting up satellite dishes for live link-ups.

Unionists, political activists and journalists were then attacked without provocation.

While the arrested demonstrators have slowly been released throughout this past week, left forces in Turkey and in Europe have been organizing a response.

The CP of Turkey, along with the major Turkish trade union organization, DISK, has filed a civil suit against state-sponsored terrorism and police repression.

In neighboring Greece, the All-Workers Militant Front, PAME, together with dozens of trade unions, organized a protest outside the Turkish Embassy on May 3 condemning the attacks. A statement from the Greek Federation of Construction Workers noted, “The development of class militancy and organization agitates [the Turkish government]. They don’t want Turkish workers to remember the history of their movement. This strike against the working class of Turkey is a strike against all of the working class.”

A longstanding U.S. ally in the area, a top U.S. arms buyer and, as of recently, a candidate member for joining the European Union, Turkey enjoys a biased immunity from the U.S. and the EU. Both conveniently ignore Turkey’s human rights violations, including political assassinations, extremely harsh treatment of political prisoners and the repression of left and Kurdish activists.

Currently, Turkey’s secular forces (including elements in the repressive military) are battling the Islamic-rooted ruling party over the role of Islam in politics. The CP of Turkey warns of U.S. and EU interests being served at the expense of the people.

“Islamists together with capitalists use state forces to suppress rising movements of workers, progressive youth, patriots, and communists and other left forces in Turkey,” the CP of Turkey said.

“The real problem in Turkey are the forces that ally themselves with U.S. and EU imperialism, regardless of whether they are Islamists, secular forces, neoliberals or nationalists.”

Laura Petricola (laurajopetricola @yahoo.com) writes from Athens, Greece.

On Mothers Day, working women tell it like it is

Fri, 11 May 2007 03:59:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Dedra Farmer was so good at her job as a Wal-Mart department manager in Oklahoma that her bosses assigned her to train new Tire and Lube Express Division managers, all of whom were men.

After she got done training them, the men went to work for $2,000 more a year than she got paid.

It’s much the same story in the Windy City.

Alice Banes, 29, a sales worker at Macy’s State Street store, told the World, “You have to be better than the men at work. You have to take care of family and still do better here at work just to prove you can hack the job and be a mother at the same time. It gives me a lot of stress.”

Brenda Carr was alone at the checkout counter with eight customers in line at Walgreens on the city’s South Side. A male department supervisor passed by, demanding to know why she hadn’t already “fronted” the shelves. She answered discreetly by glancing first at him and then at the long line approaching her register.

“Then do it in between the customers,” he snapped.

Carr told the World that he wasn’t even her boss. “He’s a department supervisor like me. I’ve been here a year longer than him and I know he gets $2 more an hour than me.”

A waitress at a coffee shop near the North Side campus of Loyola University, who asked that her name be withheld, pointed to a much younger male waiter and complained, “Not only do I get paid 50 cents less than him, but I’m worried because I’m 50 years old now.

“We’re supposed to act young and be sexy and wear this uniform,” she said, pulling on the collar of her sleeveless blouse. “It’s a lot skimpier than what I’d like to wear, plus even the nastiest, most obnoxious guy who comes in here has to be treated as if he deserves to have a damned red carpet rolled out for him.”

She was asked if she considered sexual harassment an occupational hazard. Nodding agreement, she began talking about her boss: “He looks at us as if we are no better than the utensils in here. He’ll walk into the room where we change into our uniforms and pat you on the shoulder. When I asked him to quit he said, ‘Be a good girl.’”

Women’s groups descended on Congress two weeks ago to address some of these problems, particularly the wage differential between men and women.

Using median pay figures, the groups say it takes a year and four months for a woman to earn as much as a man does in a year. Looked at in another way, a woman typically earns 80 cents for every dollar earned by her male counterpart.

That wage differential, a source of enormous extra profits for businesses, puts a downward pressure on men’s wages, too.

Unionists, led by the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the American Federation of Teachers and other pay equity groups rallied outside the Capitol and lobbied members of Congress inside.

They pushed for passage of a bill introduced by Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) titled the Fair Pay Act. The measure would put teeth into the 44-year-old federal equal pay law by increasing penalties for pay discrimination based on sex and by making it much easier to prove pay discrimination based on sex.

Dedra Farmer, the Wal-Mart supervisor who was paid less than the men she had trained, was among those who testified in Congress for the bill. Farmer has also joined 1.6 million other women, all of them current or former Wal-Mart workers, who have filed a class action suit against the firm for sexual discrimination in pay and promotions.

The negative impact of unequal pay on families is evident, particularly where lower pay forces women to work longer hours.

Charlotte Michaels, 36, a cashier at a Dominick’s supermarket who recently gave birth to a baby girl, said, “We need some paid time off to take care of our children. Having a baby deserves more than six weeks to recover.”

Carr, the Walgreens worker, said, “There are a lot of women out here who work hard. I work so much and such long hours that my kids ask me on the phone” — she waved her cell phone — “‘Mom, please come home, when are you coming home? We want to see you, mommy. Please come home.’”

jwojcik @pww.org

16 workers die per day, report says

Fri, 04 May 2007 08:55:00 +0000

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (PAI) — Just about two years ago, plumber Charles “Mike” Morrison was helping dig a trench in a Pinellas Park, Fla. But the trench had straight sides, not sloping sides, and B&B Plumbing didn’t construct a safety box for him to work in.

One wall collapsed on him — equal to 2,700 pounds of dirt — and buried him up to just beneath his arms, stepdaughter Michelle Lewis says. Twelve of his ribs plus his pelvis were broken and he was bleeding internally. Rescue teams were told to get out of the trench; it might collapse on them, too. B&B gave the dying man an oxygen mask to breathe into — and a shovel to dig himself out. He died, still trying to get out, in the trench.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined B&B $21,000 for five workplace safety violations.

They stand for five ways her stepfather should have survived, Lewis says.

Morrison was one of the 5,734 workers who died on the job in 2005, and OSHA’s fine against B&B is typical of its penalties when such deaths occur. Both trends are spotlighted in the AFL-CIO’s latest annual report on job safety and health nationwide.

“A combination of too few OSHA inspectors and low penalties makes the threat of an OSHA inspection hollow for too many employers,” the federation reported. With the low staff numbers, one inspector for every 63,670 workers, it would take OSHA 133 years to inspect each workplace in the U.S. just once.

The report says deaths on the job declined by 30 from 2004 to 2005. That’s despite a spike in coal mine deaths at the Sago Mine in West Virginia and elsewhere: from 22 in 2004 to 47 last year.

“Under Bush, regulatory activity at OSHA has ground to a halt,” the report says. “Dozens of OSHA and MSHA [Mine Safety and Health Administration] standards were pulled from the regulatory agenda, including MSHA standards on mine rescue teams, self-contained self-rescue devices, and escape ways and refuges which may have helped to prevent the fatalities at Sago.

“Some new mine safety rules are now being developed and issued,” the report continues, “but only as a result of legislation enacted in the wake of the Sago disaster.”

The report also said any new and emerging hazards for workers, like bioterrorism and pandemic flu, are inadequately addressed.

The federation said the Bush regime prefers “voluntary” programs where companies discuss worker safety standards with the agencies and get “guidance” on how to keep workplaces safe. In return, inspections stop, and that won’t work, the federation said.

Other key data from the report include the following:

• On average, 16 workers were fatally injured and more than 12,000 workers were injured or made ill each day of 2005. That does not include deaths of retired or disabled workers from occupational diseases, such as asbestosis or black lung disease.

• The worst fatality rate was in Wyoming, with 16.8 deaths per 100,000 workers in 2005, more than four times the national rate (4.1). It was followed by Montana (10.3), Mississippi (8.9), Alaska (8.2), South Dakota (7.5) and South Carolina (6.7). The lowest fatality rates were in Rhode Island (1.1 per 100,000), Vermont (2.0), Maine (2.2), Hawaii (2.3), Massachusetts (2.3) and Michigan (2.3). Either the number or rate of job fatalities rose in 24 states, with the biggest jumps in Mississippi, Montana and South Dakota.

• Construction led all occupations in fatal injuries in 2005, with 1,192, followed by transportation and warehousing (885). Fishers and fishing workers had the worst fatality rate (118.4 per 100,000), followed by loggers (92.9) and pilots and flight engineers (66.9).

The numbers won’t bring Mike Morrison back, but his stepdaughter will campaign for tougher job safety laws so other families don’t have to go through the same grief.

“Whether people are union or nonunion, Republican or Democratic, everyone needs to be protected,” she said. “I won’t rest until people realize the bottom line isn’t about dollars, it’s about human loss.”

Ohio labor runs for office

Fri, 04 May 2007 06:55:00 +0000

LORAIN, Ohio — One Central Labor Federation in northern Ohio has really taken the national AFL-CIO resolutions on political action to heart, at least the part that calls on union members to run for office. Four leading delegates of the Lorain County Labor Federation, just west of Cleveland on the shore of Lake Erie, are running for public office. Not only are they running for office, but most are expected to be elected.

Tony Krasienko, acting president of the Lorain County CLC, is the leading candidate for mayor of Lorain. The present mayor, Craig Foltin, a lonely elected Republican in this blue-collar Democratic stronghold, is not running for re-election.

Foltin was the GOP hopeful in the 13th Congressional District to fill the seat left open last year when longtime progressive congressional representative Sherrod Brown ran for Senate against incumbent GOP Sen. Mike DeWine.

Conventional wisdom, at least according to political pundits in Ohio, was that Sherrod was “too liberal” to beat incumbent senator DeWine. Foltin, a Republican from industrial Lorain, would be able win “swing voters” and win that congressional seat for the GOP, (or so they said).

Defying these “political experts,” Foltin was trounced by Betty Sutton, a state representative who is also an attorney representing the Steelworkers union (USW). Sherrod Brown also soundly defeated DeWine, running a strong campaign based on “mainstream progressive values.”

Organized labor was the main force fueling this upsurge against the GOP and the ultra-right. Democrats were also elected to all county positions.

Rather than a boost for the Republicans, Foltin and the GOP received the boot from local voters, paving the way for Kraseinko’s mayoral race. He is facing no primary opponent, which is comparable to victory in this overwhelmingly Democratic area.

Tony “Red” Zampieri, veteran USW and SOAR leader, stated, “We need strong leaders for the working class of people. Nobody knows our issues, how we’ve suffered and what our fights are more than other union folks. We need to elect not just folks who say they’re ‘for us,’ but folks who really are us. They’re the one’s we can trust!”

David Flores, a veteran officer of the Lorain County CLC and a longtime community leader, is running a very strong campaign for councilman-at-large in Lorain. A leading progressive activist, Flores is running strong and is expected to be elected in the May Democratic primary. As with the mayor’s race, this equals an almost automatic November victory.

“For too long the haves have gotten everything, while the rest of us were supposed to just set back and take it,” said Flores. “We just can’t depend on others to lead the fight for our issues, like health care, education and peace.”

Glenn Loughrie, another CLC delegate and USW Local 1104 PAC chair, is running a strong race for the 2nd Ward Council seat against an incumbent Democrat in nearby Amherst. It is Glenn’s first run for office, but he is widely seen as having the high ground in this race.

New CLC delegate Jeff Newman from the Pipefitters Union is also making a first time run for council in Lorain.

In nearby Elyria, UAW leader Art Webber is expected to be reelected as a leading member of that city’s council. He should be joined by another veteran UAW leader, Larry Tanner, on the Elyria City Council.

The strong independent labor activism in Lorain county was fueled by an historic labor-led victory over Wal-Mart here two years’ ago. Supported by leading members of both the Republican and Democratic parties, Wal-Mart made a push to re-zone Lorain to allow the construction of a superstore here.

Outspent over 100-1, unions worked with a local community group to mount a strong grassroots campaign. Defying all the experts’ predictions, the union-led campaign won a huge victory, winning every ward in the city of Lorain.

“Who better than our own people to represent our own interests,” stated Joe Thayer, organizer for the Sheet Metal Workers Union and a leader of the anti-Wal-Mart people’s coalition. “For way too long we’ve worked hard to elect folks calling themselves our ‘friends’ who take our votes, but then stab us in the back. Workers will stand up best for worker’s rights!”

Since that struggle, organized labor in this area has begun to push union members to run for office, in alliance with other progressives. As part of last year’s Democratic sweep, SEIU leader Sue Morano defeated a long-term incumbent Republican to be elected to the Ohio state Senate. Progressive Democrats Matt Lundy and Matt Barrett also defeated GOP incumbents to be elected to the Statehouse.

Labor-led electoral alliances are being built throughout Ohio, with the help of the AFL-CIO, ARA and their coalition partners. The Lorain developments are expected to serve as a positive example for this growing movement.

bruce161 @centurytel.net

Labors flame still burns for justice

Fri, 04 May 2007 04:48:00 +0000

CHICAGO — August Spies told his executioners that if they went ahead with the hanging they would ignite a fire that could never be put out.

He and three other Haymarket martyrs were indeed hanged because they led an 1886 Chicago rally for the eight-hour day, marking forever May 1 as International Workers Day. And on May Day this week, 120 years after the hanging, it was clear in this city that the fire they talked about is still burning.

Ten major unions representing 100,000 workers, led by the Chicago Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, rallied May 1 at the Haymarket Memorial to demand passage of the most radical labor law reform in 60 years of American history. When they finished they staged a dramatic march to join the hundreds of thousands who were rallying for immigrant rights at Chicago’s Grant Park.

Dennis Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, installed a plaque to the fallen labor heroes at the Haymarket Memorial and urged the crowds “to have courage as they had courage. We pledge, in their memory, to fight courageously for the Employee Free Choice Act and to fight for the rights of immigrant workers.”

Gannon said the fight for the EFCA must continue to focus on the electoral arena. He said, “Labor has to lead a fight to win bigger majorities for labor law reform in both houses of Congress and it must kick the Republicans out of the White House in ’08.”

A Bush veto, of course, is the only thing that can hold off the passage of the law for now. This fact has not been lost on the massive labor-led movement that continued in the week leading up to May 1 to lobby Congress for the passage of the EFCA.

U.S. senators last week had little time to listen to or meet with the normal contingents of corporate lobbyists who come in and out, because their offices were flooded with hundreds of steelworkers instead.

The United Steelworkers union was the latest labor organization to move into the lobbying business — a business that was once the prerogative of the big corporations. The union told senators it wanted them to support passage of the EFCA.

Labor’s push for the bill was launched by the AFL-CIO last December, and since then the House has approved the legislation. Although Democrats who favor the bill have a 51-49 majority in the Senate, they don’t have the 60 votes needed to prevent a Republican filibuster or the 66 votes needed to overturn a promised Bush veto.

Right-wing groups like the Chamber of Commerce are spending millions to oppose the bill because it would require fines for employers who break the law during organizing drives, make majority sign-up (card check) rather than an election the standard way for workers to decide on union representation, and require mediation and arbitration to ensure that workers get a first contract quickly.

At the Haymarket Memorial rally, the World interviewed Matt Chaperone, 30, a member of Local 21 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers who is now employed at AT&T. Chaperone was recently fired from his job as a technician at Comcast, the country’s largest cable provider.

“What happened to me is what happens to workers when they try to organize in the United States of America,” he said. “I tried to help build a union for myself and my co-workers at Comcast, and you know what happened? I got fired.

“The bosses asked me, always one on one, when no one else was around about my involvement with the union. I was told I better quit talking union or I would be committing career suicide,” he said.

“One day I caught some customers who were stealing cable service, and because it was my job, I reported it. They turned around and actually tried to blame me, accusing me of fraud.

“I asked what proof they had,” he said. “They had none. I had no grievance procedure. I had no representation. I had no union. This is why I came out to rally here for the Employee Free Choice Act. I don’t want anyone else to ever have to go through what I went through.”

Chaperone apologized for cutting short the interview. “I gotta march to the immigrant rights rally with my union,” he said.

You could see in his eyes that the flame was still burning.

jwojcik @pww.org

On May Day, call rings out for immigrant rights

Fri, 04 May 2007 04:37:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Hundreds of thousands of immigrant rights activists and supporters marched through downtown here May 1, demanding an end to raids and deportations, and calling for comprehensive immigration reform and a path to citizenship for the nation’s estimated 12 million undocumented workers. Other May Day and immigrant rights actions took place in dozens of cities across the country.

“The movement is alive and kicking,” said Jorge Mujica, one of the organizers of Chicago’s march. Police here said the turnout was over 150,000, 30 times more than organizers had expected, but many say that calculation was way too low. Mujica estimated that anywhere from 250,000-300,000 participated.

Mujica told the World the movement has diversified this year, trying out new tactics including lobbying efforts, petitions and other ways of getting the message across to see what works.

As evidence of the movement’s growing political clout, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley delivered a notably passionate speech to the crowd at Grant Park, saying the city welcomes immigrants.

Addressing the Bush administration, he demanded, “Will you please stop dividing our families?” He continued, “Our nation is one of compassion and understanding and we have to understand this country was built by immigrants past, present and future. It’s not a Democrat message, it’s not a Republican message. It’s the people’s message that we want common-sense immigration reform.” The mayor, not known as a supporter of progressive activism, told the crowd to remain strong and raise their flags, adding, “Stand up. Be not afraid of those who oppose us.”

People of all colors and ages representing countries like Poland, Russia, Mexico, Ireland and the U.S. marched side by side waving American flags, with large banners and colorful signs. In Spanish, groups shouted, “Bush, listen, the people are in the struggle.”

Many believe the immense outpouring was in large part due to a midday raid that took place April 24 at the Little Village Discount Mall in the heart of one of the city’s largest Mexican American communities. Immigration and FBI agents armed with rifles and dressed in bulletproof vests closed off exists to the plaza, locked down the mall and stopped about 150 shoppers and workers. They arrested 12 people, calling them suspects in a fraudulent ID operation.

An immigrant mother from Mexico who asked not to be identified marched with her two U.S.-born toddlers in strollers, along with 11 other family members and friends. She called the raid an intimidation stunt. The way immigration officials, with their guns, rounded up women and children is similar to how people are treated in Iraq during a war, she said.

“It’s an injustice that women and children are being treated this way.” She said she was marching for Elvira Arellano, now in sanctuary here fighting deportation, and immigrant mothers like her. She called Arellano a great example of a mother fighting for the rights of her U.S.-born child. “We are good people. This fight is not easy, but it is also not impossible,” she said.

Seemi Choudry, 18, a Muslim student from Lisle, west of Chicago, marched with 47 other youth from her group, the Inner City Muslim Action Network. She told the World she is frustrated with the immigration system and called the recent Chicago raid “completely atrocious.” She said, “It was public humiliation no human being should endure. Immigrants are being marginalized. They should be able to live here free from worries. When one part of humanity is suffering then we are all suffering.”

Aireale Rodgers, also 18, an African American student from Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, said she was marching to let her congressman know it’s time for comprehensive immigration reform.

“I’m here to represent the families of my friends,” she told the World. African Americans and immigrant communities have all been fighting for the same basic rights since slavery, she said. “Everyone deserves dignity and respect.”

Hundreds of workers representing their unions also marched, including Mexican American Jorge Ramirez with the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters, Local 80. Wearing a hardhat and carrying a U.S. flag in one hand and a pro-immigrant-worker sign in the other, he said, “I’m here as a Latino representing all minorities who are a strong foundation lifting up our nation. We are literally building America.”

Ramirez said he was at the march for the many people out there who are undocumented and not part of a union, and for his parents who are originally from Jalisco, Mexico.

Looking to what comes next, Mujica said, “Congress has to act now and cannot wait for a Democratic president in 2009.” The immigrant population is only getting bigger each year, he added. “Democrats need a non-negotiable approach” with their Republican counterparts, said Mujica. This is not a national or homeland security issue; there were no terrorists or criminals marching on May Day, just workers, he said.

plozano @pww.org