People Before Profit blog

Small town takes on Tysons greed

Thu, 27 Nov 2003 05:20:00 +0000

Opinion

They say you should never watch sausage being made, but if you want to see something really disgusting, check out the way Tyson Inc., the world’s largest meat company, is treating the good people of Jefferson, Wis.

Two years ago, Tyson bought the beef-and-pork processing giant IBP, thus gaining control of about 60 meatpacking plants, including the one in Jefferson, a town of 7,300 folks. Instead of embracing its adopted town, Tyson – a highly-profitable, $23 billion a year corporation – promptly got ugly, demanding a four-year wage freeze, a two-dollar cut in the pay of new hires, and an increase in the amount employees must pay for health insurance. When workers balked, Tyson turned its back on them, refusing to negotiate. The workers went on strike, but Tyson promptly hired strikebreakers to replace them – and dumped people who’ve loyally given their entire working lives to this plant.

This is the opening shot of a nationwide class war by Tyson to bust the middle-class wages of beef and pork workers down to the infamous poverty scale of poultry workers. Tyson says that it’s merely bringing the higher-paid workers “in line” with its other workers. In Jefferson, this will devastate the local economy, for knocking down 470 workers means they simply won’t have the spending power to sustain local businesses ... and the town’s middle-class aspirations.

It’s not just the workers, but all of Jefferson that’s under attack by the raw greed of a few rich, aloof executives sitting in Tyson’s faraway corporate headquarters. So, the whole town has joined the strike – “Boycott Tyson” yard signs are everywhere, Jefferson’s two grocery stores won’t sell Tyson products, the Towne Inn Cafe has banned Tyson pepperoni from its pizzas, and others have joined the fight. As one proud local puts it: “I don’t know if this small town can make a difference, but we’re doing as much as we can.”

To lend your support visit: www.tysonfamiliesstandup.org.

Jim Hightower, former Texas Agriculture Commissioner, is a radio commentator, author and social activist. His website is www.jimhightower.com.

Cintas hit for sweatshop methods

Thu, 27 Nov 2003 04:09:00 +0000

NEW YORK – Calling for an investigation into sweatshop conditions at Cintas facilities that service 11 universities nationwide, workers detailed serious abuses of workers’ rights at a press conference unveiling a report submitted to the Fair Labor Association and the Workers Rights Consortium by UNITE.

Amanda Roldan, who works at the Cintas plant in Branford, Conn., which launders uniforms for the Yale Medical Center, said she handles bloody towels but was never provided with a Hepatitis B vaccination. “At work, we are not treated like people, more as machines. It’s always push, push, push for production,” she said.

Martha Cuervo said she only makes $6.15 an hour after 20 years on the job at the Cintas factory and distribution center in Chicago, which sends uniforms out to major universities across the country including Purdue and Cornell.

“It is very upsetting that our school is supporting a company with such a record,” said Matt Lackey, a sophomore at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. “The administration has gone to great lengths to make sure we are not supporting sweatshops outside of this country, and we hope that now they’ll do the right thing to make sure sweatshops like Cintas do not exist and thrive right here in our own community.”

Most of the universities involved have adopted anti-sweatshop policies for their school logo apparel. “Universities have long been leaders in the fight against sweatshops across the world,” Bruce Raynor, UNITE president, told the press. “We hope they will show the same leadership in the fight to win justice for Cintas workers.”

Also last week, Cintas workers filed class action charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging widespread discrimination against women and minorities at Cintas, including denial of promotions and classification into lower paying, less desirable jobs.

While company profits were $249 million in the last fiscal year, the 17,000 workers receive substandard wages, and complain of serious health and safety violations, unaffordable health care and illegal firings. Cintas is the largest and most profitable laundry company in North America.

Earlier this year, workers at Cintas began a union organizing drive for recognition by UNITE and the Teamsters.

The universities cited in the report include Louisiana State University, the University of Michigan, Miami University of Ohio, Stanford, Yale, Purdue, Vanderbilt, Tulane, Cornell, Rutgers and Northwestern University.

The worker rights Consortium and the Fair Labor Association are both nonprofit organizations that assist in the enforcement of anti-sweatshop “Codes of Conduct” adopted by colleges and universities. Each organization has over 100 member schools.

The author can be reached at joelle.fishman@pobox.com.

Pondering the teacher shortage

Thu, 27 Nov 2003 04:03:00 +0000

Workers’ Correspondence

There is no arguing that teaching is one of the most emotionally draining professions due to the fact that teachers must put so much of their personal selves into their work every day. Coming out of college in the spring of 2001, I felt ready to take on such an endeavor, knowing that the job would take me through many trying moments. Early on, I had anticipated that most of my hardships would come from troublesome students, but I soon came to realize that issues surrounding classroom management would be overshadowed by the amount of tedious work handed down from the administration. This year, amidst stacks of paperwork, shaky contract proposals, and a potential strike, it has been easy for educators to lose focus on what is supposed to matter most: the kids.

In America, those in the field of education have long been under-appreciated. Every summer, numerous teaching positions open up and this void is expected to increase during the next decade. Why there is such an availability of jobs in the field of education when a declining market has cut back on hundreds of thousands of other jobs nationwide. Is teaching such an undesirable job?

In Chicago Public Schools (CPS), teachers must go through lengthy programs and a number of requirements for certification. Even after acquiring a position, before consideration for a tenure track where there is some type of job security, one must go through a new teachers program. Teachers must complete additional state testing in order to maintain their initial teaching certificates. Certainly, the prerequisites one must complete on the journey to becoming a veteran teacher and the high turnover rate among new teachers is no coincidence.

However, the criteria for teachers to gain and maintain proper certification is not in itself the problem. Most occupations have programs that are helpful in creating well-rounded professionals. However, within the field of education, there is little financial support either for those required to add to their credentials or for those who voluntarily choose to further their own education. On the other hand, in the business sector, employers pay for their employees to continue education or offset these cost with sufficient pay. They see the value in improving their employees in order to enrich overall performance. Unfortunately, teachers must pay their own way for programs that strengthen their craft. Hence, many teachers are not motivated enough or financially able to attend enrichment programs.

One of the main issues surrounding the contract for CPS teachers was the increase in pay (or lack thereof) with an expanded workday. The new contract also increased medical co-payments and other costs for adequate health care.

No contract could make up for how undervalued teachers have been over the last decade. For a young teacher, one of the most frightening things within the public school system is the awareness that your employer does not fully respect you, and the evidence of decades of action that this attitude is not going to change any time soon. Teachers new to CPS get annual salary increases of around seven or eight percent, but if you have worked for CPS more than a dozen years your pay levels off and is locked in for the next four years at four percent with the newly-adopted contract.

Most teachers, being equipped with college degrees, have greater mobility in the job market. They naturally look to switch professions after being met with poor wages, benefits, and the amount of bureaucracy they have to go through before being able to teach children.

Public schools lose credibility, politicians put added pressure on teachers, good teachers quit, and children lose focus and drop out, thereby spinning the cycle around another full turn. In the field of education, the outcome is that retaining valuable teachers becomes increasingly difficult. Unfortunately, the importance of a child’s education will not take priority in public education until the value of maintaining good teachers is treated as being essential to that education.

– A. B. Wilkinson, Chicago high school teacher (pww@pww.org).

Decent paying jobs still elusive

Thu, 27 Nov 2003 03:55:00 +0000

Despite Bush administration claims that there’s an economic recovery underway, the latest employment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics offer a grim picture for several key categories of workers.

• Older workers. For workers under age 55, job growth has been close to zero in the last two years, and the unemployment rate has grown. But workers 55 and older have the lowest unemployment rate of any age group, and they have gained 3 million jobs in the same period. This doesn’t mean that older workers are doing well. Economist Dean Baker explains, “Older workers, especially women, are apparently being driven back into the labor force by rising drug costs and shrinking stock portfolios.” Many are also being forced to work to help support their grandchildren and great grandchildren, when young parents cannot find jobs that can support their families.

• Younger workers. For teenagers, the situation is incredibly grim. Officially, unemployment for the 16-19 age group has increased from 15.4 percent to 17.1 percent in the last two years. But there are a million fewer teens working today – a job loss equal to more than 6 percent of the entire teen population.

It would be nice to think that a million more teens are staying in high school, or going to college with full-tuition grants and scholarships. It would be nice to think that these additional million kids in school don’t need part-time (or full-time) jobs to support themselves and their families. But you are reading this on planet Earth, in the USA, and George Bush is the president.

If we assume that teenagers need money and would be willing to work for it just as much today as they were two years ago, then their real unemployment this October was not the official rate of 17.1 percent, but 27.5 percent – almost double the 15.4 percent from the same month of 2001. And unemployment for African American and Latino teens is twice as high again.

• Manufacturing. Amidst the 126,000 job gain in October, manufacturing lost 24,000 jobs, passing 40 months of continuous job loss. Manufacturing jobs have a reputation for being “good jobs” – paying relatively well and with decent benefits. This reputation was achieved over a century of union struggles, and even at the best of times, plenty of manufacturing jobs were nonunion, unsafe and exhausting, with low pay and few benefits. But it is the better, union manufacturing jobs that have suffered the biggest losses. With them, the entire working class is losing a force that pulls up all jobs in the economy, and a base of union strength that benefits all workers.

• Government jobs. This October, there were 55,000 fewer government jobs than a year ago, for an 0.3 percent decline. The big losers were federal workers, with a job loss of 52,000 (1.9 percent). This follows the 4.4 percent federal jobs growth the previous year, during the post-9/11 buildup, when airport security screeners became government workers.

At the state level, employment dropped by 29,000 (0.6 percent), in the wake of deep fiscal crises. With many states continuing to come up short in this year’s budget, and most one-time revenue sources (like tobacco and “rainy day” funds) already used up, there is unlikely to be a turnaround any time soon.

Local governments – cities, towns, counties, villages, etc. – account for well over half of all government workers. Their workforce has grown by an almost-invisible 26,000 (0.2 percent) in the last year. Local budgets are not affected by the recession as quickly as state governments, but are bound to suffer as Congress and state legislators keep pushing more costs down to the next lower level. There is also wide variation, with many poor cities and rural communities, heavily dependent on federal and state funds, already making deep cuts in their workforce.

Of course, there are two groups of government jobs that are not included in this discussion. The employment figures provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics include only civilian, non-institutional jobs. Left out of the figures are military personnel and civilian prison inmates – the big growth opportunities for young people today.

The author can be reached at economics@cpusa.org.

Miami police state actions condemned

Thu, 27 Nov 2003 03:02:00 +0000

MIAMI – Calling it a “military operation,” Stop the Free Trade Area of the Americas organizers condemned the “unprecedented, unnecessary and unprovoked” police use of force here Nov. 20 against law-abiding, peaceful protesters.

Police in 21st century “robo-cop” gear attacked protesters with tear gas, stun guns and rubber bullets, creating terror and panic. Demonstrators suffered stinging eyes and throats, welts, bruises and bleeding.

Some 25,000 workers, students, environmentalists, religious activists, artists, farmers, immigrants and retirees had come from around the country and hemisphere, to voice opposition to the FTAA, the proposed hemispheric (except for Cuba) “free trade” agreement. The demonstrators say the FTAA would give too much power to corporations, sacrificing jobs, workers’ rights, wages, the environment, agriculture, democracy and local community control throughout the Americas.

Participants were listening to post-march speeches at the Bayside amphitheater and relaxing on the street, some dancing in front of police lines, when the police, without warning, fired tear gas and rubber bullets at them. Thousands, including retirees, were forced to run for cover. Many were trapped by lines of advancing police.

Biscayne Boulevard, Miami’s main downtown strip, looked like a war zone during the two-hour police riot. Demonstrators holed up at a nearby hotel watched the scene in horror. Police and embedded reporters wore gas masks while an armored personnel carrier patrolled the streets. Hundreds of people were trapped on one side of the street with nowhere to go. Those on the other side were forced to flee into nearby neighborhoods.

Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO’s chief international economist, who stands just over five feet, told a press conference Nov. 21, that she had encountered a group of senior citizens trying to find their bus. They were trapped between two advancing police lines. “Our senior citizens were absolutely terrified, as was I,” Lee said. She approached the police, identifying herself as an AFL-CIO staff member. “I was screamed at, yelled at and forced backwards,” she said. After she begged them not to use tear gas, the police eventually retreated.

“We are ashamed of the city of Miami,” Lee said.

Brandon Slattery, 22, part of the 50-member Young Communist League/Communist Party contingent, was forced to flee with others to nearby neighborhoods. “No one wanted to be in any confrontation. We were peaceful the whole time. But the police chased us, including with a tank, shooting rubber bullets at all of us. When people tried to exercise their rights, the police got more violent.”

Over a two-day period, Nov. 20-21, over 250 people were arrested. Among them was 70-year-old airline pilot and union member Ben Killmon, from Florida, and several union presidents from other countries. Representatives from the hundreds of organizations involved in the protests called the police violence and arrests an attack on constitutional, democratic and human rights.

Lawyer Brenna Bell, of the Miami Activist Defense Collective, told a Nov. 21 press conference here that the Miami police violence was “a microcosm for what is happening to protests around the country and world: ever-increasing repression of people who are just trying to get their voice and their ideas out.”

As police helicopters hovered overhead, Bell predicted that the unprecedented violation of rights would trigger many civil lawsuits. “This is not over,” she said.

“The mayor of Miami said this was a blueprint for Homeland Security,” Bell said. “Well, I don’t feel very secure.” Later that day Bell and 60 others were arrested in a police sweep of a peaceful jailhouse solidarity demonstration.

Union leaders strongly rebuffed attempts to split the anti-FTAA coalition of labor unions and “affinity groups.” AFL-CIO spokesperson Ron Judd told reporters, “The AFL-CIO stands in solidarity with the sisters and brothers at the [anti-FTAA] Welcome Center.” The history of the labor movement, Judd said, is to “protect those that are under assault.”

Citing “countless instances of humiliating repression in which the Miami police force disgraced itself,” United Steelworkers of America President Leo Gerard has called for a congressional investigation into the “massive police state” unleashed against the protest, in part with federal funds.

“It is doubly condemnable that $9 million of federal funds designated for the reconstruction of Iraq were used toward this despicable purpose,” Gerard said in a statement issued by the Steelworkers, “How can we hope to build democracy in Iraq while using massive force to dismantle it here at home?”

Gerard said Miami Police Chief John Timoney should be fired, and all charges against peaceful demonstrators should be dropped.

AFL-CIO organizers said they had negotiated with police for 3-1/2 months prior to the demonstration, and the police totally reneged on all agreements. “Clearly the police took orders from authorities in Miami and either reneged on agreements or it was total incompetence – you pick it,” Fred Azcarate, executive director of Jobs with Justice, told reporters.

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

UFCW nationalizes picket lines

Thu, 27 Nov 2003 02:54:00 +0000

Union workers turned up the heat in the health care wars this week as striking grocery workers methodically advanced their campaign to “nationalize” their picket lines.

Southern California Teamsters Union members at eight giant distribution centers walked off the job at noon on Nov. 24 when the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) pickets arrived. The Teamsters rank and file wanted to do this weeks ago, according to Jim Santangelo, president of Teamsters Joint Council 42, which represents 150,000 truck drivers and warehouse workers in 24 locals. “They’re saying it’s about time,” he told the World. Santangelo says the 8,000 warehouse workers and drivers are keenly aware that if the Safeway-owned Vons, Kroger and Albertsons grocery chains have their way with the UFCW members, the Teamsters will be faced with the same health care take-away demands when their contract comes up in two years. “Teamsters won’t cross the picketlines,” he said with assurance, “absolutely not.”

The UFCW announced that 30 picket lines went up throughout the Washington, D.C., area on Nov. 22, in addition to picket lines that are ongoing in Northern California’s Bay area, Fresno, and Sacramento.

According to the union, sales are down in all of the communities where they have extended their picket lines. “It is clear that the public understands that our fight is for affordable health care for all working families,” they say in a Nov. 23 statement.

If support can be measured by solidarity actions, the union must be right about public support. Steve Neal, director of labor community services for the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, reported that $100,000 has been collected and used to fund the agency’s food distribution program, including $58,500 from the unions that make up the Pipe Trades District Council 16.

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

As thousands demonstrate: 'Free trade' deal stalls in Miami

Thu, 27 Nov 2003 02:49:00 +0000

MIAMI – While the Bush administration had hoped last week’s ministerial meeting here would pave the way for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement in 2004, giving U.S. corporations a green light to further plunder the hemisphere, what it ran into instead was resistance from developing nations and thousands of demonstrators in the streets.

Under the slogan of “No way – FTAA,” about 25,000 people from 40 states traveled to the FTAA ministerial meeting Nov. 18-20 to protest the proposed “free trade” agreement. The demonstrators included thousands of trade unionists and activists from environmental, peace, religious, student, farmer and farm worker groups who came to Miami to exercise their constitutional right to free speech.

The unionists and anti-FTAA activists almost immediately found themselves confronted by paramilitary tactics and illegal searches and detentions.

“Trade ministers were met with a red carpet. Our members – the steelworkers, the teachers, the machinists, the auto workers, the retirees – and our coalition partners were met with tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray,” Thea Lee, chief international economist, AFL-CIO told the press on Nov. 21.

Esta Nette, an 83-year-old retired organizer for Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union, told the World, “I came down from New Jersey on the bus because FTAA called by any name is still NAFTA.”

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the United States has sustained a net loss of 879,280 jobs since 1993 as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA has destroyed huge numbers of jobs and driven down living standards in Canada and Mexico, as well. The FTAA would extend the same type of trade agreement to cover 800 million people in 34 countries.

Beset by a lack of consensus even before the talks opened, the FTAA ministerial meeting adjourned a day ahead of schedule with a declaration that Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch described as “The beginning of the end of FTAA … scaling back, punting hard decisions.” The talks left the contentious issues of agricultural tariffs and subsidies and government contracts for later negotiations to avoid an embarrassing Cancun-like collapse of talks.

Deborah James of Global Exchange, an anti-globalization group, said, “No matter how U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick tries to spin the story, it should be clear that ‘FTAA-Lite’ emerging from Miami is a major setback for the U.S. and the giant corporations behind the so-called ‘free trade’ agenda.”

The U.S. tried to salvage its corporate agenda by announcing bilateral talks with Bolivia, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Panama and Peru, some of the most impoverished countries in the hemisphere. The Hemispheric Social Alliance, representing labor, farmers, environmental and indigenous peoples, responded to the announcement by saying “bilateralism puts many countries at a greater disadvantage in their direct negotiations with the U.S.”

The drive for bilateral agreements is even more dangerous than the original proposed agreement because they can more easily ignore issues of national sovereignty, environmental protections, and labor rights.

Andy Frye of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) from Oklahoma, who worked in an iron foundry until it moved to Mexico as a result of NAFTA, told the World, “In the two years since the plant shutdown, never a week goes by when I don’t read in the paper of a new home foreclosure or divorce in the town paper.” In 2001, before the plant closed, unemployment was 3 percent and now it’s 11 percent.

The largest march during the three-day activities was kicked off by a rally in Bayfront Park. But most marchers didn’t get in, because they were met by riot police, helicopters circling overhead with Armored Personnel Carriers and water cannons. Buses were stopped en route on Interstate 95, with some turned back.

March permits negotiated by the AFL-CIO and local community groups were arbitrarily cancelled, causing chaos for thousands who had come to voice their opposition. Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, told the rally, “Thousands are being detained and prevented from coming in and marching with us. We want them to know our voice will not be silenced. Let our people in.” The crowd began chanting, “Let our people in.”

Despite the paramilitary atmosphere and repression, union members stood in solidarity with other anti-globalization activists. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney paid a visit on Wednesday to a Welcome Center housing the direct action activists and FTAA Independent Media Center to thank the participants for their solidarity and participation in this historic struggle.

Leo Gerard, president of the USWA, called upon the marchers to keep the struggle for justice going. “When we leave this march and go back home we must make sure that the people know what kind of repression we suffered at the hands of the police. … They can try to stop us today, but no one can keep the ideas from bursting free. We will succeed.”

The author can reached at jleblanc@pww.org.

click here for Spanish text

Tyson workers vow to keep up fight

Sat, 22 Nov 2003 05:14:00 +0000

“Another day longer, another day stronger.” That’s how striking Tyson Foods worker Sherri Anderson summed up the status of what is shaping up to be an epic labor battle. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney visited the picket line in Jefferson, Wis., on Nov. 7 to show the federation’s support for the striking food workers.

The story will be familiar to many: Until this year, workers at the Doskocil Food Services plant in Jefferson had gone 124 years without a strike. Some workers there had parents and grandparents in the plant before them. The workers had offered concessions when the plant faced bankruptcy in the 1980s, but in 2001 the plant was making a strong profit, putting out about 100 tons of pepperoni a day, half of the nation’s domestic output.

In 2001, Tyson Foods, already the world’s largest marketer and processor of chicken, purchased beef producer IBP and became the top company in the red meat market. One of the IBP plants it bought was Doskocil, and it sought at the first opportunity to reduce wages and benefits.

After dozens of negotiation sessions and an eight-month extension contract, the workers, represented by United Food and Commercial Workers Local 538, determined that Tyson was unwilling to negotiate in good faith. The offer on the table would have cut sick leave benefits by half and vacation time by a third, reduced starting wages by nearly a quarter, frozen wages, and required large new contributions toward health benefits.

Tyson Senior Vice President Ken Kimbro said the offer was “luxurious” compared to what Tyson offers its workers elsewhere. On Feb. 9, the union voted to strike – unanimously.

Since then, workers have maintained a continuous picket at the plant gate. Of 470 represented workers, only five have returned to work in nine months. Chief Steward Ron Peich told the World that when the first three crossed the line, “they said they had a hundred people lined up to walk with them; no one did.”

Frank Emspak, professor of Labor Education at the University of Wisconsin’s School for Workers, has been observing the fight in Jefferson since it began. “This is a very bad economic environment for labor. No one can say what will happen. But to have stayed out so long and to have remained so unified, it’s a very encouraging sign.”

Support has continued to spread for the workers. As earlier reported in the World, Dane County voted in June to join a boycott of Tyson products, including Tombstone, DiGiorno, Domino’s and Jack’s pizzas that use Tyson pepperoni. Since then, similar resolutions have been passed by Jefferson County, the city of Madison, the University of Wisconsin, and other purchasers of Tyson products. Two weeks ago an effort to bring the entire state government into the boycott was blocked by Republicans in the Legislature. Presidential candidates like Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean have also pledged to support the workers, and Dean has asked his supporters to contribute to the workers’ strike fund. The union has estimated the loss to the workers and the community in wages and buying power at roughly a million dollars for each month the strike goes on. Tyson, meanwhile, has reported its third-quarter earnings were $25 million less than a year ago, which president John Tyson acknowledged reflected the bite of the strike.

Sweeney said the Tyson strikers were fighting a battle for all labor, and he urged other union heads to extend their support. “I have never seen a more courageous group of workers,” said Sweeney. “The solidarity of this group of UFCW workers and the support of the community is just exemplary.”

The authors can be reached at

Boycott these turkeys!

Sat, 22 Nov 2003 05:11:00 +0000

Supermarket entrances up and down the Golden State were the focus of grocery worker strike support activities this week. Three thousand longshoremen held a work stop meeting during a rally in front of the Albertsons store in the Los Angeles harbor town of San Pedro on Nov. 10. Several days later, 150 of the 70,000 grocery strikers packed their placards into buses and vans for a 500-mile trip north to the state’s Bay area where on Nov. 16 they spread their picket lines to Safeway stores in San Jose, San Mateo, Contra Costa County and Fresno.

“Our main concern is health care for us and the retirees,” said 22-year-old Stephanie Massey, a meat clerk at the Anaheim Vons supermarket. “They want to reduce our coverage about 50 percent. That’s really no coverage at all!” Massey spoke to the World from the sidewalk in front of an Oakland Safeway store where she was part of a team of 10 workers from her Orange County UFCW Local 324. The response from Oakland shoppers has been “absolutely more than I could have hoped for,” she said. “If customers don’t believe us, they talk to the workers in the store and end up walking out without purchasing.”

Back in Southern California, representatives of women’s organizations, union leaders and elected officials at a Nov. 13 rally in front of Studio City’s Vons urged shoppers to “use the power of the purse” to put the squeeze on supermarket sales during the pre-Thanksgiving shopping rush. Women are the focus of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor’s boycott strategy, according to retired Association of Flight Attendants President Charlie Costello. She said 150,000 shoppers had been reached by boycott mailings and recorded messages.

At the San Pedro rally, Miguel Contreras, executive secretary-treasurer of the federation, launched a “No turkeys” boycott of Safeway-owned Vons, Pavilion, and Albertsons, urging area families to do their holiday food shopping elsewhere. Longshoremen’s Union Local 13 President Joe Donato announced that the local has donated 500 holiday baskets to UFCW families.

UFCW members in Northern California supermarkets have welcomed the Southern California pickets, according to union spokesperson Ellen Anreder. They will be bargaining with Safeway and other employers next year, according to the union, and are preparing to face similar demands for cuts to health care. She attributed a huge drop-off in Northern California sales at the targeted chains to the union’s radio ad campaign as well as the picketing activities. The union plans to extend the picket lines to Sacramento this week.

Massey and her team were expecting to be relieved from their Northern California duties by a new contingent of 15 from their local. Massey, who is a union steward, says she’d like to spend Thanksgiving home with her family, “but if my store is open, I’ll be standing out in front with a picket sign.”

The author can be reached at

Marchers say FTAA No Way!

Sat, 22 Nov 2003 05:04:00 +0000

MIAMI – As thousands of union members, environmental and human rights activists massed here to protest the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit, hundreds of community activists from low-income neighborhoods, immigrants and farm workers completed a 34-mile, three-day march on Nov. 18, chanting “Free Trade, No Way!” to the beat of drums and music. Leafleters gave out information to the onlookers. Motorists honked and flashed peace signs.

The marchers traversed U.S. Route 1 from Broward, Fla., to Miami to tell the people of Florida and the world that poverty at home or anywhere in the world must end.

Truckers, schoolteachers, students, and retirees here participated in the “Root Cause” march. “The FTAA will have a huge impact on people’s everyday lives – on the food we eat, the water we drink, our children’s access to education and health care,” said Sushma Sheth, policy/communications director for the Miami Workers Center, one of the organizers.

Sheth told the World, “We did local community-based organizing to insure grassroots participation in the fight for global justice. “The Miami Workers Center, along with Low Income Families Fighting Together (LIFFT), the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Power U Center sponsored the Root Cause campaign. They found corporate globalization among the common “root causes” for the problems of low-income workers, immigrants, farm workers and communities of color. Sheth told the World, “We researched the community impact on wages, immigration, privatization and environmental racism.”

The Root Cause campaign conducted weekly discussions on the impact of FTAA on Florida. As a result of the 10-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Florida has already lost over 27,000 jobs, mainly in manufacturing. Eight factories in Miami alone have closed and moved to other countries, leaving families and whole communities in poverty. Twenty-seven percent of jobs in Florida pay below poverty level wages.

The links between Miami, the poorest city in the U.S., and the corporate agenda for the hemisphere were dramatized by the victims of a system run on corporate greed. Mary Nesbitt, a marcher and leader of LIFFT, told the World, “Trade agreements affect everyone. Fair trade would mean having jobs, and being able to speak to government officials. With the FTAA, they meet in secret.” Nesbitt is a veteran of a struggle against the privatization of public housing sparked by Bush administration’s HOPE VI program, which has slashed the nation’s public housing supply through privatization. When the housing project she lived in for 28 years was sold off, that whole community was forced to disperse around the county. “People who knew each other for years lost their support system,” she said. The privatizing of essential human services is one of the hallmarks of free trade agreements.

“We are saying no to the FTAA because we are fighting for human rights and refugee rights, not only for Haitians,” Marleine Bastien, a Haitian community activist told the crowd at the concluding rally in Bayside Park. “We want freedom for the people of the world. You cannot come to our country and force us to work for peanuts and put us in jail when we come here.”

Marchers were housed and fed along the way by community and religious groups. On the last day, the marchers ate lunch at St. Martha’s Catholic Church, next to the headquarters of the Miami Catholic Archdiocese. Archbishop John C. Favalora told them, “We wish for you a good and peaceful journey. Together we’ll attain justice and peace.” Florida’s Catholic bishops have been involved in the defense of farm workers rights.

Marchers encountered a chilling atmosphere when they entered Miami. Free speech and the right to protest were seriously threatened by the unprecedented mobilization of more than 40 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. Businesses closed and empty streets in downtown Miami filled up with police in riot gear, with helicopters hovering overhead. Police boats patrolled in Biscayne Bay. Organizers were put under surveillance while random searches were made to intimidate protesters during the weeks of protest preparations. The ACLU and Miami Activists, a new FTAA legal observers group, have said they will pursue legal action if the harassment persists.

The Root Cause march was timed to take place during the ministerial meetings that are mapping out the final outlines of the FTAA agreement, which has been dubbed “NAFTA on steroids.” FTAA would create the largest “free trade” zone in history.

Thousands of other protesters are also gathering in Miami. Comparing this week’s actions to the anti-World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999, observers note the presence of a new confidence that corporate globalization can and must be stopped. Leo Gerard, president of the United Steel Workers of America, referred to the more than 2,000 steel workers Rapid Response team members meeting here in Miami as part of the massive labor, environmental, youth, faith-based, peace movement mobilization to protest the FTAA ministerial meeting. “Thank God for the students, for the young people out there in the streets fighting for their ideals,” he said. “Thank God for the environmentalists, family farmers, civil rights, and anti-poverty activists. None of us can win alone. Together we can’t lose.”

Scott Marshall contributed to this article. The author can be reached at

Steelworkers rally in East Chicago

Fri, 14 Nov 2003 06:43:00 +0000

Workers’ Correspondence

“Steelworkers all came from somewhere else,” Africa, Europe, Asia, South and Central America, said United Steelworkers of America District 7 Director Jim Robinson to a lunch-hour rally called to demand President Bush keep tariffs on steel for their full term. The World Trade Organization has ruled against the tariffs.

“We need to look at workers from those countries as part of our family that stayed behind,” Robinson said to the 500 steelworkers who turned out Nov. 7 at Ispat Steel headquarters in East Chicago, Ind. He cautioned that there are those who are trying to use the crisis in steel to pit U.S. workers against workers from other countries.

“We should not fall for that,” he said, urging the workers to fight to “uphold conditions and good-paying jobs our fathers and grandfathers fought for.” Robinson made it clear that the fight was not against workers in other countries. He explained that “keeping good-paying jobs will help the other workers in our family from Europe, Africa, Asia, Central and South America that stayed home.”

Other speakers at the rally included Dan Stevenson, an Indiana state representative and member of USWA Local 1010, Tom Hargrove, President of Local 1010, and Loren Hansen, President of Local 1011, representing ISG (formerly LTV). Hanson said it’s important to fight for steelworker jobs because we don’t want any more shutdowns like LTV. “I saw the human tragedy up close and don’t want that to happen to anyone else,” he said.

It was a spirited rally, although the fact that the head of Ispat in East Chicago was one of the speakers undoubtedly took some of the steam out of the crowd. After all, who feels like clapping for their boss at lunchtime? Nevertheless, I’m sure that President Bush got the message.

– Jim Lange, retired steelworker (pww@pww.org)

An Australian view of Bush and free trade

Fri, 14 Nov 2003 06:03:00 +0000

Opinion

The corporate media were buzzing with columnists and commentators on the purpose of U.S. President George W. Bush’s 21-hour visit to Australia last month. Most said that it was to give the Australian government the customary rub on the tummy for getting involved in another U.S. military adventure. The desire of George “Dubya” to hurry along the conclusion of an Australia U.S. Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) came a close second. Whatever the reason, the U.S. President did say that he would like to see such an agreement in place by the end of December.

Not surprisingly, “our” leaders agree with him.

In contrast to the cautious approach to a free trade agreement with China, where Australia’s Foreign Minister Alexander Downer speaks of a one- or even two-year period for investigation, AUSFTA is presented as something akin to a law of nature.

As usual, Australia’s federal government is speaking on behalf of a minute segment of the population and corporate interests.

AUSFTA threatens the sovereignty of the Australian government over pharmaceuticals, quarantine regulations, genetically engineered products, health care, education, consumer protection and even our culture and identity.

Despite repeated assurances from the federal government that nothing would change, the Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme [Australia’s national affordable prescription drug program] and other important public services are threatened. Powerful interests on the other side of the Pacific are pushing for “reforms.”

The U.S. group representing major drug companies, PhRMA, claims that its members do not receive a sufficiently high price for the drugs they sell to the Australian government. They want bigger profits. These companies – the most profitable in the USA – are used to getting their way and an AUSFTA would open the door wider to their influence in Australia.

The U.S. claims Australia’s quarantine laws are a “barrier to trade” and under an FTA would use a “free trade” pretext to breech our quarantine protection.

The lead negotiator for the U.S. government, Bob Zoellick, has indicated that the signing of AUSFTA is conditional on a “relaxation” of Australia’s quarantine laws.

The U.S. is host to many diseases, viruses and pests not known in Australia. The Australian Productivity Commission has forecast that if quarantine laws were relaxed, a disease outbreak in the livestock sector could cost $13 billion in lost gross domestic product and at least 30,000 jobs. Australia currently has disease-free status in many of its agricultural sectors.

According to surveys, over 70 percent of Australians would not buy genetically engineered (GE) food if they had the choice. But U.S. agribusiness will stop at nothing to push GE products onto markets and would use a FTA to overrule Australian labeling laws and to stop states introducing GE moratoriums and GE-free zones.

The list of services set to be upended by an AUSFTA is extensive.

Trade Minister Mark Vaile gave reassurances that the agreement would not impair the government’s ability to “deliver fundamental objectives in health care, education, consumer protection and supporting Australian culture and identity.”

But the experience of the Canadians and Mexicans – now bound to the U.S. through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) – is that U.S. companies have used newly created opportunities to muscle into the provision of public services.

They would do the same to Australia.

In fact, NAFTA provides many insights into what “free trade” agreements with the U.S. are about. The Economic Policy Institute in the U.S. estimates that 765,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs have been wiped out since 1993.

“The fact is,” says Jim English, secretary-treasurer of the United Steelworkers of America, “NAFTA has been a disaster for workers on both sides of the border. It has reduced wages by 22 percent for Mexican workers and at the same time it has cut by more than half the number of successful organizing campaigns in this country when employers threaten workers with moving their plants out of the country.”

This is what these agreements are designed to do. They give greater freedom for transnational corporations to do as they please to maximize profits. They are yet another means by which to limit the ability of workers to defend themselves and the services they require.

Bush and Australian Prime Minister Howard are long-standing members of the “coalition of the willing” in that global struggle.

This article is reprinted, slightly modified, from The Guardian, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia.

Wal-Mart: outlaw at home and in China

Fri, 14 Nov 2003 05:59:00 +0000

Opinion

Wal-Mart is an outlaw. It is also the largest retailer in the world and the largest private employer in the world. It is financially larger than Switzerland and employs more than eight times the number of troops Bush has deployed in Iraq.

The recent news of INS raids on undocumented workers cleaning Wal-Mart stores revealed the company’s common practice of illegally not paying overtime to immigrant workers forced to toil long hours under brutal conditions. While the INS raids are despicably in tune with the Bush/Ashcroft assault on civil liberties and workers’ rights, they also highlight the criminal nature of Wal-Mart’s corporate dealings with labor. And as all of U.S. labor knows, this is only the surface of the many illegal, anti-union practices of Wal-Mart.

But Wal-Mart is not just a criminal in the U.S. It is also guilty of breaking labor law in China. In China, unions are protected by labor law. Chinese labor law mandates that if any workers request a union the company must recognize the union and agree to negotiate a labor contract.

(I hear the gasps of those who think the Chinese unions are not real unions. For this article I won’t get into the question of unions under public ownership and those under capitalism – except to say: With the tremendous influx of U.S. and foreign capital owned by viciously anti-union outfits like Wal-Mart, the Chinese trade union movement is redefining itself. Chinese workers and their unions fully realize the changes they must make to protect their jobs and working conditions from foreign predators like Wal-Mart. They are embracing the more class-struggle kind of trade unionism practiced in capitalist countries.)

China’s equivalent of the AFL-CIO, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), has launched a campaign to make Wal-Mart comply with Chinese labor law and recognize a union at Wal-Mart. According to the ACFTU, Wal-Mart has stonewalled all union efforts. Wal-Mart has told the ACFTU that it has no need for unions because it has set up “effective channels” to resolve labor disputes. (Doesn’t that sound familiar?) As part of its argument against unions Wal-Mart also brags that it has no unions in its American stores either.

And that’s the main point I’m trying to make. What a great opportunity to unite workers against a common corporate bad guy.

Grocery store workers are on strike across this country to defend their health care benefits. Wal-Mart operates thousands of non-union grocery stores that undercut benefit and wage levels for union grocery store workers. It should be clear to all that to really make progress in living standards for grocery workers, Wal-Mart must be organized. It is also clear that only a concerted national campaign, with the full support of the entire labor movement, can tackle organizing Wal-Mart.

And ultimately, worldwide worker solidarity is the only guaranteed way to protect living standards and labor conditions in a globalized economy. Wal-Mart’s flaunting of labor law in both the U.S. and China make for a great opportunity to reach out internationally to all workers truly interested in reining in this corporate criminal. At some point, in some form, there will have to be a worldwide get-together of trade unionists to tackle this behemoth.

Which gets me to my second point. China bashing won’t get us one step closer to organizing Wal-Mart, or solving trade problems. Wal-Mart and big business love it when workers are divided. Think what you want about the Chinese unions, but they have 131 million members. That’s a whole lot of folks just like you and me who want the same things we do: livable wages, fairness on the job, safe and healthy working conditions, and a collective voice in dealing with their employer.

China bashing not only divides us from those 131 million allies in China; it also promotes racist stereotypes and divisions in the American working class. Asian American workers have become a significant force in U.S. labor, dedicating their skill, hard work and experience to our common cause.

In the end, China bashing only serves the divide-and-conquer interest of Wal-Mart and other transnational corporations. In today’s global economy our answer to China bashing should be: “Workers of the World, Unite – Back by popular demand.”

Scott Marshall is a vice-chair of the Communist Party USA and chair of its Labor Department. He can be reached at scott@rednet.org

Students around globe oppose trade in education

Fri, 14 Nov 2003 04:22:00 +0000

The International Union of Students (IUS) was joined by regional students’ organizations from around the world on Sept. 13 in a Global Student Day of Action to Defend Public Education. The action was aimed at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and trade agreements like the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

Students around the world are calling for all levels of education to be removed from the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), a set of rules about international trade in the service sector adopted by the WTO. GATS forces developing countries, in particular, to open public services, health care and public education to privatization by giant corporations.

“The International Union of Students and the major regional students’ organizations in each of the five global regions continue to mount opposition to the trade agenda in education,” said Frage Sherif, secretary-general of the IUS. “Students worldwide [demonstrated] in Cancún and many countries around the world [against] the World Trade Organization,” said Sherif. “The message is the same everywhere: our governments must defend and develop public education systems, and the World Trade Organization must leave education out of all trade deals.”

Added Sherif: “Education at all levels is becoming more costly, less diverse and less accessible to people as it is included in trade regimes such as the General Agreement on Trade in Services. Our public education is not for sale, access to education is a right of all people.”

The IUS, whose headquarters are in Prague, Czech Republic, is also concerned about other features of the WTO and its trade regime, including its exclusively market-oriented development agenda, closed-door decision-making structures, support of World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies and programs, unfair dispute settlement mechanisms, lack of integration of social and economic rights, and interference in the distribution of affordable medicine.

“Students around the world face many of the same issues – rising fees, under-funding, privatization, repression of their rights,” said Elizabeth Carlyle, IUS spokesperson in the Americas for the day of action. “In Cancún and around the globe, we are working together, challenging our governments to build access to public education at all levels, for all people.”

To cement this common message, the International Union of Students has signed on to a global student statement entitled “Public Education Is Not For Sale.” The statement has also been signed by the All Africa Student Union, the Asian Students Association, the Canadian Federation of Students, the General Union of Arab Students, the International Youth and Student Movement for the United Nations, the Movement of Students in Quebec, the National Unions of Students in Europe, the Organization of Latin American and Caribbean Students, and the United States Student Association (USSA). Together they represent millions of students worldwide. For more information, contact the USSA at www.usstudents.org.

The author can be reached at ldellapiana@pww.org

The high cost of free trade Maytag workers face plant closing

Fri, 14 Nov 2003 04:15:00 +0000

“NAFTA allowed Maytag to commit the premeditated murder of our community,” said Dave Bevard, a 30-year veteran of Maytag’s refrigerator plant in Galesburg, Ill. Trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NFTA) and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) “are definitely not for us,” he told the World.

“NAFTA has failed on every level, in every way possible,” he said in a telephone interview Nov. 10. “The prospects are pretty grim.”

Bevard, 51, should know. As president of the Machinists union representing 1,400 hourly workers at the plant, he is at the center of a human catastrophe in this western Illinois town.

In October 2002 Maytag, the third largest appliance maker in the U.S., announced it was closing its Galesburg plant and relocating its operations to a “maquiladora” in Reynosa, Mexico, by December 2004. In Mexico, it plans to pay manufacturing workers about $2 an hour, far less than the $15 an hour wage the average Galesburg worker makes.

“The company laid off 380 people on Sept. 26,” Bevard said. A little over a year from now, all 1,400 workers – plus about 300 people in management – are slated to hit the unemployment line.

Galesburg, a city of 34,000, is still reeling from the shock. Maytag is the area’s largest employer and has been an anchor of this all-American town. The refrigerator plant has operated for 52 years, providing employment, decent wages and benefits for three generations of workers.

In 1994, just after the passage of NAFTA, the company started pressing the union to make contract concessions, particularly in benefits. When contract talks rolled around again in August 2002, Maytag’s management became even more aggressive toward the union, Local Lodge 2063 of the International Association of Machinists.

“The company came to us with a take-it-or-leave-it proposal. We made big concessions in health care, in attendance policies, and in other areas. It was very upsetting,” Bevard said. But members felt they had little choice.

“When we agreed to the contract, a company negotiator said, ‘Well, at least you can take solace that you did what you needed to do to save your jobs,’” Bevard said. “Six months later they announced the closing.”

“You can’t help feeling betrayed,” he said.

The union isn’t alone in feeling cheated. The state and the city gave economic incentives to keep the company in Galesburg. Since the mid-’90s, the state provided $7.5 million in grants and loans. The city passed a one-quarter percent sales tax hike to give Maytag an extra $3 million. Other tax abatements, to the tune of about $4 million, were also thrown into the pot.

But in the end, Maytag decided to take the money and run. It now claims it paid too much in property taxes, and seeks a $300,000 refund before it skips town.

Rep. Lane Evans (D-Ill.), who represents the area, characterized Maytag’s actions as “an insult to this community.” He said the closing highlights the failure of NAFTA. Some lawmakers have called on Maytag to repay what it got in tax breaks.

The ripple effects of the plant closing will reverberate throughout the region, as Maytag’s $150 million annual payroll goes up in smoke.

“Western Illinois University did a study of related job losses if the plant closes – for example, teachers, fire fighters, service workers, small businesses – and they estimated that Knox County alone will lose 5,000 jobs,” Bevard said.

Already, he said, small businesses like the music store in the mall and the town’s 50-year-old bookstore are closing. A local health clinic has reported a big surge in stress-related illnesses. And pressure is increasing on workers at two other manufacturing companies in town – Gates Rubber and Butler Manufacturing – to make wage and benefit concessions.

It all adds up to an economic calamity that shows little signs of abating.

NAFTA has also been a bad deal for Mexican workers, Bevard said. “Service workers in Mexico are getting paid 58 cents per hour. Trade agreements like this are dropping everyone down to the lowest common denominator. … All they do is give a fast track for a corporation to make a fast buck.”

As if to illustrate his point, Maytag’s financial reports show that Chairman and CEO Ralph Hake received at least $1.7 million in pay in 2002.

The author can be reached at malmberg@pww.org

Free trade scam:Its bad for workers everywhere

Fri, 14 Nov 2003 03:48:00 +0000

“We’ll be marching with truck drivers and electrical workers, nurses and teachers, health care workers and Teamsters, all kinds of working people,” Fred Frost, president of the South Florida AFL-CIO, told the Miami Herald. Frost was describing the mass mobilization of labor for demonstrations in Miami against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), Nov. 17-21.

In addition to labor, all kinds of activists are converging on Miami. Jane Rosecrans is an anti-globalization activist from Richmond, Va. She is part of a network of folks all across the country mobilizing for Miami. When asked why she is so active in building the demonstrations, she told the World: “Most members of the middle class don’t believe corporate globalization affects them, but it does. It destroys jobs in the United States and hurts workers and the environment in other countries. I recently traveled to Argentina as part of a delegation examining the effects of corporate globalization and I was astounded by the poverty but also the spirit of the people I met there.”

Rosecrans is typical of the kinds of grassroots activists around the country that are digging in to defeat the FTAA and corporate globalization. She is active in Unitarian Universalists for a Just Economic Community, one of a coalition of groups in Richmond working to turn out folks for Miami. She has been active in local forums and demonstrations protesting the World Trade Organization and sees the protests in Miami as a big “part of that effort.”

Doyle Canning is another activist on the road to Miami. She works from Plainfield, Vt. Doyle is the organizing director at the Institute for Social Ecology Biotechnology Project. She is part of the “Eco-Bloc,” a coalition of environmental activists that emerged in the protests against the World Bank in Washington, D.C., in April 2002. Doyle told the World, “The Eco-Bloc is mobilizing in Miami to stop the FTAA because so-called free trade agreements pose dire threats to our planet and people everywhere. Corporate globalization means the acceleration of ecological destruction – be it climate change, genetically engineered foods, water privatization, or the general rollback on environmental standards and protections. It’s time to build a future for ecology and democracy in America and around the world and to stop the FTAA in its tracks in Miami.”

Mark Froemke is president of the Northern Valley Labor Council AFL-CIO that covers adjacent counties in North Dakota and northern Minnesota. He says that 25 people from his local of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco and Grain Millers union are going to Miami. His local works in the sugar beet industry. Froemke is proud that his local and labor council are part of an effort to send 300 unionists from northern Minnesota to Miami. They also helped organize rallies in their area in support of the Seattle-to-Miami anti-FTAA caravan that has been crossing the country.

Froemke told the World, “We’re going for a couple of reasons. One, NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) put tremendous pressure on the sugar industry. The FTAA could end the sugar beet industry and kill our communities. And secondly we’re workers, and these agreements are bad for workers everywhere. We’re concerned about workers and their communities everywhere in the world. We all worry about the same things, jobs, good schools, health care and our children’s futures.”

Indeed there will be delegations marching in Miami from countries throughout the hemisphere. Eric Rubin, state coordinator of the Florida Fair Trade Coalition, told the World that disparate groups from many countries and many different nationalities will be meeting and exchanging ideas thoughout the week of activities. “Along with the protests will be teach-ins where activists from the 34 countries in the proposed FTAA will meet to discuss and learn from each other: where workers, family farmers, retirees, environmentalists, faith-based groups, are being brought together against these anti-people” policies, Rubin told the World.

In addition to marches, forums and exchanges there will be lively cultural events during the week. A highlight of the week’s activities is the People’s Gala for Global Justice on Wednesday night which will feature Billy Bragg, Lester Chambers, Steve Earle and many others. These artists have been on a whirlwind tour of 13 cities to promote the FTAA protests and global justice.

The author can be reached at scott@rednet.org

click here for Spanish text

Ergonomics: An issue whose time is still coming

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 13:01:00 +0000

The fight for ergonomic protection for workers in Washington state experienced a tragic setback when anti-labor, anti-worker Proposition I–841 passed in this month’s elections. The state had been leading the nation in attempting to protect its workers from the ravages of repetitive motion disease since 2000, when the very first action of the Bush administration upon taking office was to repeal the tough ergonomics standards promulgated in response to the demands of workers and unions during the Clinton administration.

Washington state adopted its ergonomics rule in May 2000 and was to start enforcing it at large companies last July. The rules required employers to identify all jobs that pose ergonomic hazards and then to take all possible steps to reduce or eliminate those hazards. Every year in Washington, more than 50,000 people suffer work-related musculoskeletal injuries such as carpal-tunnel syndrome, shoulder tendonitis and back strain, according to state records. Such injuries account for an estimated 40 percent of all workers’ compensation costs.

In response to howls of protest from businesses, however, Gov. Gary Locke ordered a two-year delay in the implementation of the new rule. That meant the inspections and enforcement for large companies were not to begin until July 2005, and most small employers had until 2008 to comply. Locke’s action didn’t satisfy the state’s employers; it emboldened them. They put a well-financed referendum on the 2003 ballot to kill the new safety and health regulation. Stooping to a new low, they named the anti-worker proposition “Workers Against Job-Killing Rules.”

Corporate interests, lead by the Boeing airplane manufacturing company, pulled out all stops to pass I-841, employing high-powered “Madison Avenue” advertisers to play on the weak economy of the region. Business leaders said the ergonomics rule would cost them more than $725 million a year. Of course, the problems of the region are not the fault of the workers who face this disabling workplace hazard. But the out-financed labor and people’s movement was unable to show the full impact of doing away with the ergonomic legislation, and the proposition passed 53 to 47 percent.

Oddly, while corporate America has been fighting on every level to kill ergonomics regulations, the U.S. Navy has been doing the opposite, adopting virtually the same ergonomic rule that was passed by the Washington Legislature. At the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Rick Williams, president of the Bremerton Metal Trades Council said, “They know that avoiding preventable injuries saves money and improves mission readiness. It’s really just common sense and it absolutely works.”

The message from Washington state is clear, and it’s one more big reason to defeat Bush in 2004. An over-the-top section of I-841 states that even if the federal government enacts a strong ergonomic rule, it cannot be enforced in Washington! That is how frightened corporate interests are of this regulation. So, let’s dump Bush, enact a new ergonomic rule, and challenge this anti-worker proposition in Washington state.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Solidarity grows for fired roofers

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:58:00 +0000

TUCSON – Union and community supporters reacted with anger when they heard of Metric Roofing’s latest attack on workers and their right to organize. Metric Roofing has fired or suspended six of the seven Roofers Union organizing committee members on its workforce in the last two weeks.

More than 60 labor and community members showed up at Metric for a spirited predawn picket on Nov. 8. Metric Roofing, which subcontracts with all the major homebuilders in Tucson, has a record of anti-worker and anti-union abuse. Roofers have accused Metric of repeatedly cheating them on piecework, and even of refusing to supply the roofers with water on the job. Just imagine what it’s like to be up on a roof in Arizona’s summer heat when the temperature reaches 110 degrees or more in the shade.

Joining the fired roofers in solidarity were machinists (IAM), communication workers (CWA), carpenters, electrical workers (IBEW), and state, county, and municipal workers (AFSCME).

Tucson’s Jobs with Justice made an especially successful effort to mobilize on very short notice. Student activists with the University of Arizona’s Students against Sweatshops were also there, as were immigrant rights activists with the Coalicion de Derechos Humanos and the Border Action Network. Arizona roofers are predominantly immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

Arizona Roofers Union Organizer Victor Griego thanked the pickets for their show of solidarity. “You guys give strength to these workers,” he said, promising that the organizing drive and protests of the firings will continue. Griego also pledged the support of his union to all others in struggle.

The United Union of Roofers and Waterproofers started their “Justice for Roofers” campaign in Arizona in 2000 with zero union roofers in the state. Since then more than 800 roofers, most of them immigrants, have won contracts. This figure represents close to 30 percent of roofers working in residential construction. The Roofers Union is taking organizing seriously, spending 40 to 50 percent of their national budget on organizing. That commitment of resources, and the building of broad community support, has led to successful organizing drives, said Griego.

The author can be reached at stelnik@webtv.net

Stop the war on retirees

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:56:00 +0000

Workers’ correspondence

It struck like a knife to the gut when an old steelworker friend recently contacted me with an amazing story. According to my friend, the Pension Benefits Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) had just sent letters to retired Bethlehem steelworkers demanding that they pay back the pensions they had worked their entire lives to earn. Some retirees have to pay back up to $15,000.

Retired steelworkers, after having worked in extreme conditions in order to make the steel that built and ran our nation, and having paid into their pensions for their entire lives, are now being robbed by the very agency that was set up by Congress to protect them in conditions such as these, when their company goes bankrupt.

Infuriating as this is, unfortunately, it isn’t surprising to other steelworkers. This past year, steelworkers at Republic Technologies Inc. (RTI) saw their company file for bankruptcy. Forty steel companies have gone bankrupt in recent years. Workers (including myself) were upset, frightened that we would lose our jobs and savings through no fault of our own. However, at least we thought we were assured that the PBGC would protect our pensions. In fact, just a month before the RTI bankruptcy and shut down. LTV workers’ pensions were secured by the PBGC.

However, something changed in the next month. George W. Bush fired the director of the PBGC and appointed Steven Kandarian as head of that agency. Kandarian’s first official act was to arbitrarily shift the “official” shut down date for RTI to a fictitious date two months earlier for the sole purpose of disqualifying thousands of steelworkers from receiving their pensions.

This was a horrible blow! I myself, only three weeks short of 30 years, was one of those denied the pension I was due. We suffered five suicides among RTI workers. A dear friend, Auggie Waldron, dropped dead after opening his mail and seeing his benefits were cut off.

Our union (USWA) filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the workers. Cities, counties, thousands of public officials, even the state of Ohio officially rallied to our cause, demanding that the PBGC pay the pensions. Ohio Congressman Sherrod Brown worked to get other congressional reps to sign on to a letter demanding our pensions be restored. After 18 months, we finally received justice – or so we thought – when Federal Judge Economis in Youngstown ruled in our favor. However, the PBGC announced a week later that, instead of paying the pensions, they would appeal the decision.

So it’s not surprising to us to hear that the PBGC is demanding Bethlehem steelworkers pay back the pensions they earned.

This evil, cruel and inhuman action policy will keep on unless those at the top levels of the Bush administration hear a massive outcry demanding that the pension-grab be stopped. What can you do? Demand that the PBGC stop its undeclared war on retirees. Demand that the PBGC drop its appeal of the RTI lawsuit, and begin paying those workers the pensions we earned. Demand that the PBGC stop its evil, vicious, inhuman money grab from Bethlehem retirees. Even more important, call the White House and demand that George W. Bush tell his PBGC to stop the war against retirees!

– Bruce Bostick (pww@pww.org)

Bush administration twists truth on jobs

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:52:00 +0000

Treasury Secretary John Snow is boasting about the prospects for the economy, and for job growth in particular. Pro-administration writers credit the Bush tax cuts, and say that a recovering economy will deprive the Democrats of a key campaign issue.

Why are they cheering?

The economy grew at a 7.2 percent annual rate in the three-month period of July-September. This expansion was driven by a 6.6 percent growth rate in consumer spending, an 11.1 percent growth rate in business investment, and a 25.5 percent increase in federal government spending. Productivity was up 8.1 percent. Then, on Nov. 7, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a net gain of 286,000 jobs for the August through October period – the best record since the recession began in March 2001.

There are good reasons to look on this scenario with skepticism.

The small part of the Bush tax cut that actually went to working families arrived this summer, providing a one-time-only $100 billion boost to the economy. Consumer demand was also spurred by a continuing high level of mortgage refinancing, which cannot remain at current levels. The construction industry has been supported by a continued bubble in the housing market, also unsustainable. Business investment has been strongest in computers – not because businesses are expanding, but because of the need to replace obsolete equipment. The productivity increases mean that companies are getting more done with fewer workers – good for profits, but bad for employment. Spending cuts and tax increases at the state and local level will continue to put a damper on jobs and on workers’ spending power. So will stagnant wages, depressed, in part, by the Bush anti-union agenda.

For all these reasons, a continued recovery is likely to be weak over the next year, and the economy could still slide into a double-dip recession.

In the long run, things look even worse. Continuing domestic and foreign deficits lay the basis for higher interest rates, higher inflation, attacks on government programs including Social Security and Medicare, and increased taxes. The result could be a long period of higher unemployment and slower growth or recession.

But the Bush administration isn’t concerned about the long run. They are looking at the economy between now and November 2004. They are looking at how they can spin the difficult situation most Americans face. Here are some strategies that Bush, along with Republicans at all levels, is likely to use.

• Distorting figures, or quoting them out of context. Like claiming that the 126,000 jobs gained in October mean the administration has turned the corner on unemployment. But the economy must average at least 150,000 new jobs each month to absorb the increase in the labor force. October, the best month in almost three years, was 24,000 short. This will be the first administration since the Great Depression to preside over an absolute loss in jobs.

• To get the tax cuts passed, the White House claimed they would create an average of 306,000 jobs per month. Now, the administration points to the job gains in the last three months as evidence that the tax cuts are providing jobs for ordinary Americans. They don’t mention their original promise, or that they have fallen almost a million jobs short just since June. The White House depends on a compliant media to ignore these inconvenient facts.

• The Bush administration can use much of the Pentagon budget, including the just-approved $87 billion, as a slush fund to pay off corporate supporters and influence voters. Look for a rash of press conferences in key states and districts next year, announcing new military contracts, along with a few jobs.

• Republicans will continue to claim that the only problem with the economy is too much government spending and high taxes. They don’t have to persuade everyone – just a bare majority in key states.

The economy is a disaster for working people, and is unlikely to improve in the next year. Bush can remain president only by wiggling out of the major responsibility his administration bears for the hardships we all face. But he is a slippery fellow. To beat Bush, it will take clearly explaining the issues, solid organizing at all levels, and confidence that working class families in every state can recognize where their interests lie.

The author can be reached at economics@cpusa.org