People Before Profit blog

Greyhound workers rally for justice

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 06:06:00 +0000

DALLAS — Members of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1700 hit the streets here as part of a national series of rallies aimed at winning a better contract with Greyhound Bus Lines.

“It’s not just the bus, it’s us!” the workers shouted as they circled the downtown bus station, which is just one block away from national corporate headquarters. A leaflet said, “Greyhound drivers are still the safest in the country, but the company has cut a third of its employees, frozen our pension plan, and priced our health benefits out of reach. In Texas, the company has reduced or eliminated service to 26 towns and cities.” Local Union President Bruce Hamilton explained to the rally that the company is trying to put off serious negotiations until close to the January contract expiration date. Other speakers talked about the hardships they had faced as the company kept cutting back. Some had had come from as far away as Philadelphia.

A North Texas Jobs with Justice representative thanked ATU 1700 members for their militant strike during the winter of 1989-90, when weekly protests were held at the bus station. Area unions came together to help, and eventually formed a Jobs with Justice chapter for ongoing solidarity actions. Local 1700 represents more than 3,000 drivers, mechanics, and other employees. Previous rallies were in Los Angeles and Cleveland. Atlanta and New York will have rallies soon. For information about solidarity efforts, call Vice President Karen Miller at (901) 384-9433.

flittle7 @ yahoo.com

They heard

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 09:34:00 +0000

Do you think they heard us this time?

Although the Bush administration and its congressional allies have done a very good job of ignoring working families for six years, I think they must have heard us Nov. 7.

Working families have rejected the policies of the Bush administration and its Republican rubber-stamp leadership in Congress. We said no to giving special favors to the privileged while blocking a minimum wage increase. No to lousy trade deals that have exported good jobs. No to privatizing Social Security, our most important family protection program. No to spending hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives in Iraq while ignoring the war on the middle class here at home. No to energy and health care policies that have fattened oil and pharmaceutical industry profits without helping working families meet their needs or build for tomorrow.

This election, though, was not just about what working families reject. It also was about what we embrace: fairness, opportunity, real family values, security and shared responsibilities for those around us who need our help.

We will tell the new members of Congress what working families expect them to do immediately:

• Raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour.

• Restore workers’ freedom to form unions — pass the Employee Free Choice Act and reverse the National Labor Relations Board’s recent ruling that allows employers to deny workers’ union rights by classifying them as “supervisors.”

• Overturn the ban prohibiting Medicare from negotiating with drug companies for more affordable prescription drugs.

• Stop sending our best jobs overseas — reward companies that create jobs at home, instead of giving tax dollars to companies that export our jobs.

• Reverse the cuts in student loans made by the Republican Congress.

We’ll also tell the newly elected senators and representatives about the longer-term expectations of working families that Congress must immediately start work to:

• Provide quality, affordable health care for all.

• Write new plans to provide real retirement security for America’s workers and retirees, starting with reforming corporate bankruptcy laws that enable companies to dump their obligations to employees.

• Bring our troops home from Iraq rapidly and make our neighborhoods and nation safer and more secure by fighting the real war on terror and preparing for natural disasters.

• End the tax breaks for Big Oil and make serious investments in renewable energy to reduce our dependency on foreign oil.

• Revitalize manufacturing and safeguard good jobs by ending China’s currency manipulation, restoring balance to our trade agenda and rejecting trade deals that do not guarantee workers’ rights and environmental protections. No Fast Track for President Bush!

• Make America a leader again in respecting human rights and civil rights at home and around the world.

• Adequately fund and support a world-class public education system for all our children.

• Develop a reasonable immigration system that protects the rights of all workers and provides a path to citizenship for hard-working, tax-paying immigrant workers who come to our nation seeking a better life.

• Rebuild America’s roads, bridges, schools, water systems and other infrastructure while creating good jobs to get the work done.

We all worked so hard to mobilize working family voters for change in this election. The hard work isn’t over — now we must keep the heat on Congress to make sure our voices continue to be heard. But after seeing the change working families of our country accomplished in this election, I have no doubt we will succeed.

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

Labor board leaves workers in twilight zone

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 07:48:00 +0000

The U.S. Department of Labor’s web site refers to the National Labor Relations Act, passed in 1935, as “labor’s Magna Carta,” extolling the fact that the act guarantees “workers the right to organize and bargain collectively.”

That right could be history for millions of America’s workers in the wake of a recent decision by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that sharply limits union eligibility. The decision goes well beyond a blow to unions: it could result in a more polarized economy and a less democratic society.

The origin of the current ruling can be found in a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision — the Kentucky River case — in which the court bounced back to the NLRB the issue of what defines a supervisor.

In a partisan 3-2 decision in the Oakwood Health Care case, all Bush appointees to the board voted to redefine “supervisor” far more broadly. Instead of those old-fashioned criteria such as hiring, firing and promoting other workers, this new ruling says that someone can be classified as a “boss” when they do a modest amount of coordination, say assigning a worker to the night shift. And they only need to perform these “supervisory” duties as little as 10 percent to 15 percent of the workweek.

Overnight, millions of Americans could find themselves “promoted” to supervisory ranks. A little reassigning, a little independent thinking and presto — you’ve climbed the job ladder. Before clinking the champagne glasses, however, it’s best to remember that the reward is not a fatter paycheck but the loss of a fundamental labor right: union membership.

The two remaining Clinton board members both strongly dissented, pointing out that the decision stranded many workers in an employment “twilight zone”: “workers who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees.”

While the Oakwood Health Care case deals with nurses, this expansive definition of supervision could impact many workers, from professionals such as computer programmers to blue-collar stalwarts such as toolmakers. The board dissenters point out that by 2012 nearly one out of four employees — 34 million — could be classified as professionals, an area particularly subject to this reclassification.

Throughout the economy, new forms of work organization and new forms of information technology are giving workers increased input on the job. It is ironic, not to say undemocratic, to think that more input could result in fewer rights. The result could be a back to the future scenario where we return to the labor protections of the early 1930s as we enter the 21st century.

This decision reflects a broader pattern in which recent NLRB rulings undermine the intent of the National Labor Relations Act. Instead of facilitating “the right to organize and bargain collectively,” the NLRB has eliminated it for graduate teaching assistants, temporary workers and the handicapped, among others.

For all too many workers, joining a union represents a risk rather than a choice. Twenty-three thousand workers a year are disciplined or even terminated for union activity, about one worker every 23 minutes, according to American Rights at Work, a labor policy organization.

Union membership has fallen from about 35 percent of the workforce in the mid-1950s to less than 8 percent in the private sector today. Big corporations have become more powerful than ever while unions have been sharply downsized.

Even before the current NLRB ruling, Human Rights Watch sharply criticized the exclusion of millions of workers from union coverage and found that U.S. labor law failed to meet human rights norms in critical areas.

As worker rights are being dismantled, we have become a far more polarized economy.

U.S. workers are in the midst of the first expansion in 60 years in which worker paychecks are being bypassed. As union membership has continued to shrink, so have worker wages. The wages of nonmanagement employees, adjusted for inflation, have slid 10 percent since the beginning of the 1970s.

In the past, unions have linked rising productivity to higher wages and better benefits, paving the road to the middle class. These gains fueled purchasing power throughout the economy, stimulating economic growth.

More than paychecks are at stake. Unions also have given voice to worker concerns on the job. In the case of nurses, nearly 60 percent told a recent survey that unions provide a way to improve patient care by insuring a formal channel to press for adequate staffing and better equipment. When nurses lose this channel, patients often pay the price.

Limiting unions in the workplace also mutes their voice politically, corroding the checks and balances vital to a democratic society. Who then speaks for the broader interests of working families on issues from the minimum wage to health care?

At issue is workers retaining the right to decide who represents them. By eliminating this choice, the labor board’s decision weakens unions today and undermines democracy tomorrow.

Harley Shaiken is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in labor and the global economy, and author of many books and articles on the U.S. workforce. This article is reprinted from the AFL-CIO’s online Point of View (www.aflcio.org).

Education is a right: New Yorkers fight for fair funding

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 07:29:00 +0000

NEW YORK CITY — In 2001, New York State Supreme Court Justice Leland DeGrasse ruled that New York State was in violation of its own Constitution which guarantees every child the right to a “sound, basic education.” DeGrasse wrote a landmark decision in favor of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s argument that New York City public schools were unconstitutionally underfunded.

Since then, education activists, teachers and parents have been fighting — in the courts and in the court of public opinion — to remedy the gross inequities in public school funding.

DeGrasse’s ruling has been affirmed at many different levels of the court system, but the years have passed and New York City’s public school students continue to be cheated. (Although the CFE case was filed on behalf of New York City’s schools, the courts’ decisions will affect school funding statewide, and ultimately should result in more money going to many other underfunded districts around the state.)

This struggle, initiated in 1993, took another step forward last month at a hearing before the state Court of Appeals. In a nutshell, the case is down to this: Do the courts have the right to require the legislature to allocate funds for a specific purpose? If the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) wins, the city’s public school students would be in for a windfall — perhaps as much as $5 billion a year.

Big city, big school system, big problems

One-third of all school children in New York State live in New York City. New York City is the largest school system in the country. It also has some of the biggest problems and challenges, among them that 80 percent of students have limited English proficiency and 62 percent live in poverty.

A 2005 Education Trust report showed that the city’s school children are victims of the biggest funding gap in the nation. And there is a direct correlation between per pupil spending and graduation rates. Only 50 percent of students graduate, the third lowest of all urban school districts in the country.

Although some schools shine, many are troubled places, with inadequate and dilapidated facilities, out-of-date equipment, and teachers and staff who are overwhelmed with large classes, burdensome requirements from N.Y.’s Department of Education, and growing pressure to “teach to the test” (standardized test prepping).

More bleak statistics: 29 percent of elementary schools have instruction in hallways, gyms and other converted space; 21 percent of high schools and 33 percent of middle schools have no functioning science lab; 32 percent of elementary schools have no playground.

Special education services are a huge issue. Recently the office of the city’s Public Advocate received information that hundreds of special education classrooms are over capacity — some at close to double capacity. Scores of special education students are currently sitting at home “awaiting placement.”

Long legal battle

In an interview with the World, April Humphrey, NYC lead organizer for the Alliance for Quality Education, the coalition that organizes grassroots support for the CFE case, described the dense legal maze it has gone through as ruling after ruling was appealed by Republican Gov. George Pataki.

“In 2002, the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court decision and ordered New York State to come up with the money to fully fund NYC’s schools. Both CFE and Pataki did costing out studies, but came up with wildly diverging figures.” (CFE, $6 billion annually; Pataki’s commission, $2 billion.)

No money was ever allocated, however, since the State Assembly and State Senate didn’t agree on the governor’s figure, and when the judge’s 13-month deadline came and went, the court set up a “Special Masters” panel.

“This panel calculated the cost at $5.6 billion, pretty close to the CFE figure,” Humphrey said. “After another appeal, the state Supreme Court affirmed both the amount and the process. And then, again, this was appealed by Pataki to the Appellate Division court, which said the dollar figure was about right, but that, on the other hand, the courts don’t have the power to compel the Legislature to come up with money. So this decision was appealed by both sides.”

Where will the money come from?

Once the legal battle is settled, the 800-pound gorilla in the room — where will the money come from — will move front and center. This also has wide implications for school districts across the country fighting similar fair funding battles.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal claimed the cost of implementing CFE was too high, and would place a huge burden on homeowners in new property taxes.

Republican gubernatorial candidate John Faso argued that more money isn’t needed, and that the state can’t afford it. And although Democratic Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer has promised to settle the case and has received the support of the teachers union, one of his proposals for a funding source — lowering health care costs by closing hospitals — goes in the wrong direction and is certain to be fought by many of the same forces that support CFE.

CFE and AQE have long argued that finding ways to fund programs is the job of the state Legislature, but as Humphrey noted, “they had 13 months and didn’t come up with anything.” She added, “AQE does not advocate raising this money through higher property taxes.”

According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, “What New York State needs to do now is to undo some of the damage of the last 25 years. It needs to move in the opposite direction to make the tax system fairer and to generate the revenue necessary to fund a statewide solution to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit and to reduce the pressure that we are now placing on the property and sales tax bases.”

Humphrey agrees: “What we need is to go back to an income tax structure more similar to what existed in the late 1970s, before Pataki cut taxes for the highest income earners. This would raise a huge amount of money.

“If previous state income tax levels were restored, the fact is that lots of localities would be able to reduce property taxes. New York State provides one of the lowest levels of school funding in the country, and relies much more heavily on local taxes, which for the most part means property taxes. We actually are advocating that the state raise the overall level of funding but also that it take on a bigger share of the total so localities can reduce their share.

“In addition, other proposals have been put out, like the idea of closing the corporate tax loopholes.”

When asked about what these billions could buy, Humphrey explained, “Justice DeGrasse used concrete measures in making his [original] ruling. He looked at three things: class size, teacher quality and what are called ‘instrumentalities of learning,’ that is, equipment and supplies.

“So some of the money would go to reducing class sizes. Class size makes a big difference in test performance, grades, etc. Nobody would argue that NYC class sizes aren’t too big. It’s just the hard cold truth.”

Big issue: smaller class size

Class size is considered one of the single most important factors in providing children with the best learning environment, and classes in New York City are way above the state average. This issue has been the focus of many campaigns in recent years, in addition to the CFE case.

In 2005, the Working Families Party initiated a campaign to fund class size reduction by maintaining an existing tax surcharge on incomes over $500,000. (See related charts.)

That same year, the advocacy group New Yorkers for Smaller Class Sizes collected tens of thousands of signatures to place on the ballot a referendum requiring immediate reduction of class sizes. Perhaps taking a page from Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg blocked the referendum and then appealed it in court, and that battle is still taking place.

Referring to another of Judge DeGrasse’s criteria, teacher quality, Humphrey explained the effect of more funding: “Well, one measure is turnover, which is much higher in NYC. We end up with a lot of inexperienced teachers, and then they end up concentrated in the worst performing schools, and then there are other problems. There’s no mentoring available; it’s hard to gain the experience you need.

“Fifty percent of New York City’s new teachers leave within their first five years of teaching, either for other school districts or out of the profession altogether,” Humphrey said. “And if you survey those who leave, their reasons are class size, salary, and lack of respect and autonomy on the job.”

What’s ahead

A decision on the October court hearing could take from three to six months, and should settle three issues, said Humphrey. “One, do the courts have the right to tell the executive and legislative branches what to do and where to spend money, two, how much money is required to meet the state’s constitutional standard and three, what kind of accountability measures must be included.”

CFE is hoping the court will agree with them that it “can order the state to allocate funds, that it is completely within the authority of the court because the state’s Constitution is being violated.”

While awaiting the court decision, education funding activists will not be sitting still. “We’re hopeful about the state elections, because [Democratic gubernatorial candidate] Spitzer has already said that, assuming he’s elected, resolving CFE on a statewide basis is one of his top priorities,” Humphrey said. “He sounds much more positive than Pataki.” Meanwhile AQE plans to continue building its grassroots campaign. And as New York City Councilman Robert Jackson, the lead plaintiff in the CFE lawsuit, puts it, “we’re not giving up until all of our children receive their constitutionally mandated right to a ‘sound basic education.’”

Elena Mora (emora@cpusa.org) is chair of the New York State Communist Party.

Workers not at fault in BPs deadly blast

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 07:22:00 +0000

Chemical board blames corporate cost-cutting

Agreeing with the Steelworkers union and strongly rejecting company claims of workers’ guilt, the federal government’s chemical safety investigations board threw the book at British Petroleum on Oct. 31 over the fatal explosion at its Texas City refinery more than a year ago.

In its preliminary report and recommendations to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Chemical Safety Board said BP knew of hazards at the plant before the March 23, 2005, blast, which killed 15 workers and injured 180 other people. It said the firm didn’t fix the biggest hazards because it refused to spend the money.

“In 2004, BP’s own auditors found similar problems that were common across 35 units worldwide, including Texas City,” safety board chair Carolyn W. Merritt explained. “The findings describe the drastic effects of corporate cost-cutting at Texas City, where maintenance and infrastructure deteriorated over time.”

Steelworkers spokeswoman Lynne Baker wasn’t surprised by the findings.

“These voluntary protection programs in the refineries aren’t working,” she said of the Bush administration OSHA’s favored method for dealing with job safety and health issues, both in refineries and elsewhere. “It’s like the fox guarding the chicken house,” she continued. “Industry can’t police itself.”

Merritt’s five-person board was unanimous in its findings. Merritt said the explosion, and the reasons for it, should serve as a cautionary tale for oil and chemical companies and workers nationwide.

BP claimed that workers — members of the Steelworkers and formerly members of PACE and its predecessor, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers — were responsible for the explosion in the Texas City refinery’s “blowdown drum,” part of its isomerization unit. USW sharply disagreed and challenged that conclusion, with its own investigation.

The chemical board found BP, not the workers, were at fault. Lead investigator Don Holmstrom reported “a distillation tower was overfilled with highly flammable hydrocarbons” which flowed down, and overflowed the drum. The drum had 58 valves. No valves “had undergone a required relief valve and piping study” to see if they could handle overfilling or other hazards, Merritt noted.

“Not only could the blowdown drum not hold enough liquid, it could not assure safe dispersion of flammable vapors through the vent stack,” Holmstrom said. And those conditions existed before the blast 18 months ago.

Before the drum exploded, Holmstrom said, it had eight releases of flammable vapors from 1994 to 2004. Six of the eight times, “ground-level vapor clouds” of hydrocarbons formed. Those would have produced explosions had a flame been present to set them off, he said. The other two times, the vent stack caught fire.

BP had 17 such blowdown drums at its refineries, including Texas City, and engineers recommended they all be removed as antiquated and possibly dangerous, he noted, to be replaced by a safer flare system. At Texas City “this was not done,” Holmstrom said. “Cost pressures drove this decision.”

Merritt also warned that other aging refineries in the U.S. are similarly at risk, a point Baker said USW emphasizes repeatedly. To prevent similar fatal explosions elsewhere, the board recommended OSHA warn companies “against using similar blowdown drums,” urge use of inherently safer flare systems, and ensure companies plan effectively for large-scale flammable liquid releases from process equipment.

It also called for “concerted inspection and enforcement” by OSHA at the plants.

— Press Associates Inc.

Civil rights legend Pancho Medrano honored

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 07:02:00 +0000

NewsAnalysis

DALLAS — Activists here honored one of the nation’s most distinguished civil rights figures Nov. 4. On legislation originated by Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D), who represents East Dallas, the Lakeland Hills Post Office was rededicated to the memory of Francisco “Pancho” Medrano.

Speakers, including surviving family members, limited their comments to Medrano’s dedication to his family and to the civil rights movement. If they had discussed Medrano’s true place in Texas and U.S. history, the day might not have contained enough hours.

Born here in 1920, Pancho Medrano became the heavyweight boxing champion of Mexico in his youth. He was well known and loved even before United Auto Workers union President Walter Reuther chose him as special civil rights representative in 1960. In that position, Medrano secured his place in American history.

Hardly a moment in American civil rights history does not contain a place for Pancho Medrano. He was at Selma and in Birmingham with Martin Luther King. He was with Cesar Chavez in Delano. It was Pancho who defended Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson from a crazed racist crowd in Dallas.

It was Pancho who delivered thousands of UAW dollars to help start the United Farm Workers of America. Pancho was only a few feet behind Bobby Kennedy when Sirhan Sirhan shot him dead. Pancho stood with the farm workers in the Rio Grande Valley when Texas Rangers violently attacked them, and Pancho eventually won the Supreme Court decision that helped end the Rangers’ violent, racist, reactionary and anti-union history.

Pancho helped bring thousands of Black and Latino workers into unions. He never missed a political campaign where civil rights was an issue. His offspring held, and continue to hold, important local offices. He worked to help the Kennedys, Rep. Johnson and Chicago Mayor Harold Washington. Pancho used his even-handed anti-racism to build strong coalitions that bolstered the workers’ movement.

At the dedication ceremony, Rep. Johnson wept as she remembered her 40 years of friendship with Pancho Medrano. “Nothing was too small for him if it helped with civil rights,” she said, “He paved the way for all of us!”

City Councilwoman Pauline Medrano, Pancho’s daughter, acknowledged the big crowd of 350 well-known progressive political figures and civil rights activists in the audience. She recalled that her father rose from his deathbed to vote in the 2002 primary election. She recalled a quote that almost all of Pancho’s friends had heard him say: “From the day you are born, to the day you die, you are in politics!”

Mission accomplished: Labor kicks ass

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 06:20:00 +0000

Labor’s challenge in this election was to provide the organizing to transform the workers’ frustration and anger into political power, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said at a post-election press conference Nov. 8.

It was not only labor’s message but its messengers who achieved that goal, said AFL-CIO Political Action Director Karen Ackerman. “Union members talked to union members,” she said. An army of 200,000 such “trusted messengers” knocked on 8 million doors and burned up the phone lines with 30 million calls — “mostly at dinner time,” she allowed with a smile.

Through a “targeted, focused, extensive political program we spoke to exactly the people we needed to,” she said. Much of the margin of victory would be found in “drop-off voters” — those who voted in the presidential election in 2004 but had not turned out in the last midterm contest in 2002. There were half a million such voters in Ohio alone. While sophisticated “micro-targeting” techniques identified these voters, it was fellow union members who contacted each such voter 20 to 25 times over the last year — at work, at home, by phone or by mail. The volunteers went directly to union members and their families with information, not rhetoric, on critical issues like the economy and Social Security.

“We met and exceeded all of our targets,” said Ackerman. Three-quarters of union members supported union-endorsed candidates in the congressional races.

The Democratic margin of victory in all congressional races was 6.8 million, she said, and the percent of voters from union households voting. Democratic provided 5.6 million of that margin, or 80 percent. The union vote figures include active workers, retirees, family members and the 1.5 million members of Working America, the new AFL-CIO affiliate for those who have no unions in their workplace.

“We were by far the most powerful turnout engine on the progressive side,” said Sweeney.

Sweeney made clear that the battle hasn’t ended with changing control of Congress. “We have no intention of depending naively on the Democrats to lead the way toward the changes working families showed they want,” he declared. Sweeney vowed to “keep up our campaign and keep working people working together to demand that Congress take decisive action.”

He spelled out a program he expects the new Congress to move on in its first hours in office: increasing the minimum wage, restoring workers’ freedom to organize, giving Medicare power to negotiate for lower drug prices, changing a trade policy which rewards companies that send jobs overseas, and restoration of funding for college “so all the children of working people can get an education.”

Sweeney also listed other urgent priorities — health care, rapidly bringing the troops home from Iraq, energy independence, funding public education and developing a “reasonable immigration policy that protects the rights of all workers.”

Gail Ganiszewski of Woodlawn, Pa., a member of the American Postal Workers union since she started at the Post Office at the age of 19 in 1973, said she had been a registered Republican. She told reporters that the push to privatize the postal service and fear of losing health care benefits “opened my eyes,” convincing her not only to change her registration, but, for the first time, to volunteer for her union’s 2006 election efforts. “I am a proud working class woman,” she said.

Ganiszewski was joined by Sharon Feemster, who identified herself as a 27-year worker in the final inspection department of Timken Steel’s Mansfield, Ohio, plant. “We are working harder, producing more, but real wages are falling behind,” she said. Feemster added she was especially concerned about the ease with which corporations abuse bankruptcy. She spent the days before the election phone-banking and doing plant gate literature distributions. “I was pleased with the outcome in Ohio,” she added modestly.

The two women from battleground states dramatized Sweeney’s observation: “Commentators have tried to separate voters’ concerns into neat boxes. Iraq. The economy. Health care. Corruption. But for working people, these are all different dimensions of a central reality, a country that is being dragged hard in the wrong direction. The Bush administration layered a terrible war in Iraq that has failed to make us safer onto an economy that has failed to help middle class Americans pay their bills.”

Louise Parry, working-class robin

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 10:38:00 +0000

When Louise Parry died suddenly last June 29 at the age of 85, she left unfinished reading on her bedside table: David McCullough’s “John Adams,” Frances L. Broderick’s study of the great W.E.B. Du Bois, Eric Foner’s “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution.”

Early in life, Parry set about addressing that unfinished business. A working-class revolutionary, she foresaw a socialist United States, with the power in the hands of working men and women.

All her life, she felt at one with nature — the universe in its full majesty. “She was a robin,” her son Jon said in simple elegy. An unpretentious songbird in human form.

Politically fearless, Parry did not wilt under the savagery of McCarthyism, and in her final months she was still on the battlefront against the George W. Bush regime.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer accompanied its respectful obituary with a picture of Parry at a recent peace demonstration, wearing her trademark cheerful expression and displaying the sign she had lettered for the occasion: “Stop Mad Cowboy Disease!”

When a dear friend, Elmer Kistler, ran for the Legislature as a Communist, Louise proudly chaired his campaign committee. In the 1980s, she circulated petitions in conservative Boise to win a place on the Idaho ballot for retired steelworker and Communist leader Gus Hall.

Her working life began as a teenager, cleaning the houses of the well-to-do in Bellevue. During World War II, she worked in a Massachusetts shipyard as a first-class Navy welder, building tank landing ships for the invasions of Normandy, Italy and North Africa.

In 1946, back in Seattle and working at the telephone company, she met her future husband Will. They became active in the campaign to re-elect Hugh DeLacy, a progressive Democratic congressman. But DeLacy was red-baited to defeat at the hands of a Republican nonentity, Homer Jones.

Meanwhile, Louise had become involved in an organizing strike at the phone company. When the strike was broken, she was blacklisted.

In December 1946, she and Will were married. When they applied for the marriage license, the clerk said, “That will be five dollars, please.” Will turned to Louise and said, “You told me it was three dollars!” They found a jeweler who was going out of business and for $7.50 bought Louise the simple gold ring she wore throughout life.

Sixty years of married life followed, as they often told one another, “through thin and thinner.” Naomi was born in 1948, Jonathan in 1952, and in that year they bought the modest house on Seattle’s Beacon Hill that was home to Louise for the rest of her life.

Louise taught pre-school children, worked as a secretary, then as a bundler in a garment shop. Laid off during the McCarthy years, Will found a job in a corrugated box plant, where he worked for 21 years.

For 30 years, Louise was a faithful presence in the second violin section of the Seattle Philharmonic, a respected amateur symphony. Her role, she often said, was simply “to contribute to the orchestra’s sound.”

In 1993, Louise received the Esther Tye Smith Award for “Outstanding Service and Dedication” to the orchestra.

At age 50, Louise returned to the University of Washington to earn a degree in social work. At 60 she found the best job of her life: a job with union pay and benefits as a secretary in the diabetes research program at Seattle’s Veterans Administration hospital.

She helped organize Local 1488 of the State Employees at the university. After she retired in 1995, her union presented her with a certificate of appreciation for service to the local. Earlier awards included State Employees Local 443 1992 Political Action Volunteer of the Year, and Washington Federation of State Employees 1993 Outstanding Service Award.

In 1997, she was Seattle coordinator for the AFL-CIO’s Senior Summer campaign supporting the United Farm Workers organizing drive in the Central Washington apple orchards.

At its 2004 convention, the Washington State Labor Council gave Louise and Will its “Power to the People” award for lifetime service to working men and women.

Louise devoted her final decade to the senior movement, as a leading activist with the Puget Sound Alliance for Retired Americans and its predecessor, the Puget Sound Council of Senior Citizens.

She is survived by her husband Will; children Naomi and Jonathan; three grandchildren, Corrina Parry and Matthew and William Poulin; and her brother William G. Long Jr.

Contributions in Louise’s memory may be sent to the Puget Sound Alliance or to a cause of your choice.

Abridged from The Retiree Advocate, Seattle, Wash.

Worse than union-busting

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 10:21:00 +0000

A television ad playing in Michigan this September seemed innocent enough: an adorable little girl in braids, a schoolroom filled to the brim with the latest colorful learning aids and enthusiastic students eager to learn. But wait; the pigtailed girl is giving a report on union malfeasance. The teacher appears shocked to hear that her union dues support worker-friendly political candidates. Seriously?

The nationwide arrival of commercials like this one — often accompanied by full-page newspaper and radio ads — should raise eyebrows. This isn’t a promo for a new parody on the next installment of “Saturday Night Live” or “The Daily Show.” The TV spots are the handiwork of a powerful, well-financed web of extremist, conservative organizations and well-paid spin-doctors on a mission to dismantle labor unions.

The ads beg the question: Who’s willing to invest millions to undermine the right of teachers, nurses and other workers in America to earn a decent living and protect their interests in the workplace? The answer is far less innocent than ponytails and reads like a page torn out of Christopher Buckley’s bestseller, “Thank You for Smoking.”

The over-the-top mudslinging by the Center for Union Facts, the National Right to Work Committee and other anti-union groups is nothing more than an attempt to pull the wool over our eyes, hiding the real crisis in the American workplace.

Too many workers in the U.S. still can’t adequately provide basic necessities for their families, protect themselves from workplace hazards or take care of themselves when they get old or sick. The firings, intimidation and harassment that often befall workers attempting to exercise freedoms of speech and association by forming unions are threats to our democracy. When faced with union organizing drives, 30 percent of employers terminate pro-union workers, 40 percent threaten to close a worksite if a union prevails and 51 percent coerce workers into opposing unions with bribery and favoritism.

The motives behind assailing organized workers are both financial and ideological. Union-busting is big business. Just ask Center for Union Facts founder and D.C. mercenary lobbyist Rick Berman. He’s the mastermind behind the ads and has earned a living attacking other public interest groups — like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the Centers for Disease Control — for clients including the alcohol and fast food industries. Although he won’t reveal who is bankrolling CUF, attacking unions seems to be the source of his latest windfall.

And Berman isn’t the only one profiting from conspiring to bring about the demise of worker-built organizations. Search for “union buster” on Google and peruse over 3 million hits. The proliferation of “union avoidance” consulting has resulted in 82 percent of employers hiring help to fight worker organizing drives.

But the assault on unions goes deeper than the dollar. It is bolstered by a long-standing conservative political objective to eradicate unions. Right-wingers know something the rest of us seem to have forgotten: Workers still want unions because they are a powerful deterrent to poverty and unfettered corporate greed. When conservative political strategist Grover Norquist says, “We’re going to crush labor as a political entity” and ultimately “break unions,” it isn’t because unions aren’t relevant anymore. The right knows that unions act as the nation’s conscience by advancing civil rights, environmental protections and other causes of equality, justice and fair play far beyond the workplace.

If worker-built organizations weren’t powerful, the right wouldn’t invest so much time and money to dismantle them. And Berman’s supporters would be less concerned with obscuring their support from public view.

So the next time you come across a slick television, radio or newspaper ad peddling anti-union propaganda, ask yourself who benefits when workers are prevented from joining together to represent themselves. Question what’s at stake when democratic rights are limited in the workplace.

The anti-union network’s vision for the workplace is out of sync with what we value in America.

Mary Beth Maxwell is executive director of American Rights at Work, a national labor policy organization. This article is reprinted from TomPaine.com.

Inequalitys cause: loss of power

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 08:16:00 +0000

Recent data show economists, not welders and machinists, need retraining

Recently, there has been growing recognition of the enormous increase in U.S. income inequality that has occurred over the last 25 years, bringing back inequality levels not seen since 1929.

This expanding recognition of the income distribution problem raises the question “what is the cause?” One short answer is changed economic power between workers and corporations. This change has affected wage bargaining and whose interests get taken into account in business and economic policy decision-making.

The power explanation stands in sharp contrast to economists’ stories about increased income inequality being due to rising returns to skill and education. What is so important about the power story is that it torpedoes the standard explanation of income distribution. And with it sinks much other economics about the adverse effects of trade unions, the idea of a natural rate of unemployment, and many claims about the benefits of globalization.

A recent research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University titled “Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?” reports that productivity growth has been largely captured by those in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, especially those in the top one-tenth of 1 percent. This squarely challenges the conventional wisdom that rising income inequality is due to increased economic premiums to skill and education.

Education poorly rewarded

This finding should come as no surprise. For the past two decades, the Economic Policy Institute has documented rising income inequality: hourly wages of those with less than a college degree fell between 1979 and 2003; wages of college degree holders rose by less than 1 percent a year over that period; and those of advanced degree holders grew by less than 1.1 percent per year. Consequently, the notion of enormous returns to education is a myth.

But the education story remains popular because it serves the social and political purposes of the powerful and favored. First, it implicitly blames the victims for their plight. Workers are responsible for their condition, having been too stupid or lazy to finish high school and go to college. With glib ease, Washington “suits” can then dismiss amazingly skilled welders, mechanics and blast furnace operators as unskilled.

Second, the education story allays fears about globalization and rising corporate power because these supposedly have little to do with rising inequality, which instead is attributed to skill-rewarding technological change. Third, investing in education provides a convenient solution for elite policy makers. Fourth, the education story is consistent with the dominant economic theory of income distribution, and therefore saves that theory.

Free markets don’t protect workers

That dominant theory (known as marginal productivity theory) claims that free markets ensure that workers are not exploited and are paid their contribution to production. The logic is that markets prevent exploitation, since a firm that won’t pay a worker her contribution will find that worker poached away by another firm that is willing to pay slightly more.

The education hypothesis fits neatly with this theory. The claim is that technology has increased the productivity of more educated workers, and firms operating in competitive markets have therefore increased wages of these workers.

The only problem is the facts don’t fit the theory. Returns to education have not been stellar and cannot explain the pattern of wage and income change that has occurred.

The marginal product theory of economists nonetheless appeals to the elite, being a combination of explanation and justification of income distribution. Free markets pay workers what they are worth, justifying wages and explaining them. Furthermore, free markets prevent exploitation, making unions and minimum wages unnecessary. Indeed, the theory allows the rich and powerful to claim that these essential worker protections are bad and increase unemployment by pricing workers out of jobs.

But it now has become clear that the theory does not explain the worsening of income distribution. That means another theory is needed — one that admits the role of power, institutions, and socially created perceptions of who adds value. Rather than skilled welders and machinists needing retraining, it is economists who need re-training and re-education.

Thomas Palley, a widely published economist, served as the AFL-CIO’s assistant director of public policy. This article is excerpted from The Guild Reporter (www.newsguild.org), a publication of The Newspaper Guild/CWA.

Oaxaca bleeds, but does not give up

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 07:49:00 +0000

News Analysis

On Oct. 29, the rightist lame duck president of Mexico, Vicente Fox Quezada, sent in 4,000 Federal Protective Police armed with tanks, helicopters, water cannons and high powered rifles to clear the southern city of Oaxaca (population about 275,000) of the protesters who have held it since May.

The state of Oaxaca is one of the poorest in Mexico and is getting poorer. Teachers are badly underpaid and have carried out actions demanding pay hikes for several successive years. This year, when the teacher protests started in May, the state governor, Ulisis Ruiz Ortiz of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), sent in armed police to dislodge the protesters instead of negotiating, leading to the injury of many protesters.

Ruiz is a typical old-style PRI political boss widely suspected of corruption, including rigging elections, springing his own brother, accused of drug crimes, from jail, and diverting state government funds to help the electoral campaign of this year’s PRI presidential candidate. Even worse, there are accusations that his thugs have murdered political opponents in several parts of Oaxaca state.

So the dislodgement of the protesters in the spring caused the cup of popular anger with Ruiz to run over. Numerous labor, indigenous, community and social action groups, integrated into APPO, the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca, added their demands to those of the teachers, as well as now demanding that Ruiz resign or be removed.

APPO forces set up barricades in Oaxaca city, disrupting tourism. APPO began to receive support from all quarters of Mexico, including “The Other Campaign” of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, which consists of an extra-electoral national campaign against the neoliberal policies of the Fox government.

After the presidential elections in July, there were massive protests in Mexico City and elsewhere against the rigging of the elections by the Fox government and the right (including Fox’s National Action Party, PAN, and the formerly ruling PRI). As the Oaxaca face-off continued, and with reports of the killing of more than a dozen APPO supporters during the summer, tensions mounted, as did national support for APPO.

On Oct. 26, Fox’s interior secretary, Carlos Abascal, appeared to have negotiated an agreement with the teachers, giving them most of what they demanded in exchange for returning to class this week. Yet the next day APPO supporters manning barricades were assaulted by a group of 200 PRI thugs, who opened fire and killed at least three people, including a New York Indymedia reporter, Brad Will. So the struggle at the barricades continued, and the teachers did not return to class.

For the last several weeks, there were fears of federal intervention, fears that materialized on Oct. 29. The Federal Protective Police has a bad reputation for repressive activities in other parts of Mexico. Though some thought the police force might just interpose itself between the APPO and PRI forces, all such hopes were quickly dashed. It became clear that the police mandate was to clear away the demonstrators and their barricades and return the city to “normalcy and order.”

APPO supporters knew they could not engage in armed struggle with the heavily armed police (one slogan was “We can’t deal with their weapons, but they can’t deal with our ideas”). Yet civil disobedience continued, with shoving matches between protesters and police, and the possible deaths of several more protesters.

At least 50 APPO activists have been arrested. The main square, or Zocalo, of Oaxaca city was cleared, and protesters retreated to the university campus where they continued to control the radio broadcasts for a while. As of writing, the police control public spaces in Oaxaca but APPO protests are still going on in a mobile form.

Support for APPO is being organized all over Mexico by the Party of the Mexican Communists, the Zapatistas and other groups. Protests are being organized against Mexican consulates all over the United States. Belatedly, the Mexican Senate has asked Ruiz to reconsider an earlier refusal to resign. This resolution was supported by even some of Ruiz’s fellow PRI members.

The protests will continue and spread, because they arise from the fact that the neoliberal development model pushed by Fox and his PRI predecessors has caused the continuing impoverishment of the mass of the Mexican people, who have their backs to the wall.

Labor launches final push to oust Republican right

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 06:56:00 +0000

‘Working families are very dissatisfied with the direction our country is going’

Organized labor and its allies launched a massive, nationwide get-out-the-vote drive in the final days of the midterm election as polls showed many tight races certain to be decided by voter turnout.

William Burga, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, told a Nov. 1 telephone news conference that millions of Ohio voters, disgusted by Republican-dominated government at both the federal and state level, were turning toward the Democratic challengers.

“Two issues are affecting the election in Ohio,” Burga said. “The failure of the state or federal government to enact an increase in the minimum wage, and the corruption in this state. You have one-party rule and all of a sudden you have corruption ... federal corruption as well as state corruption.” Labor, he said, put an initiative on the ballot to raise the state minimum wage, likely to increase the voter turnout.

The AFL-CIO’s political action director, Karen Ackerman, said the labor federation was working in 175 races across the nation, reaching millions of union households in the final four days. In door-to-door canvassing, in shop floor discussions and phone-banking, she said, “We are seeing a rejection by working families of the Bush agenda, exporting jobs, undermining job security. … This year it is really about turnout and not persuasion. Working families are very dissatisfied with the direction our country is going.”

So far, the labor movement has conducted 500 “labor walks” across Ohio, speaking to 280,000 people. Over 3.5 million flyers have been distributed and 3 million phone calls have been made in Ohio alone. “In close races, labor’s vote will make the difference,” Ackerman said.

Karl Rove’s vaunted “72-hour” get-out-the-vote machine is not working this time, she commented. “The Republicans are having serious problems with their base vote. When we go and knock on doors of union and non-union households, there is a deep cynicism and rejection of the war [in Iraq] and the economic insecurity families are facing.”

Karen Nussbaum, director of the AFL-CIO-affiliated Working America, said hundreds of volunteers have focused on Ohio’s suburbs and exurbs. “What we are hearing is that people who have been lifelong Republicans are very concerned at the direction of the country on health care, jobs, the war,” she said.

The fight to end Republican control is not limited to the labor movement. Actor Michael J. Fox galvanized millions of voters with his television ads in support of embryonic stem cell research. Fox’s body, wracked with Parkinson’s disease, flailed as he urged voters to cast their ballots for Democratic Senate candidates Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Ben Cardin of Maryland.

Rush Limbaugh drew wide criticism when he snarled on the air that Fox “is either acting or off his meds.” Sean Tipton, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, told the World, “With Michael Fox, everyone feels like they have a family member with Parkinson’s. No one likes it when a bully picks on a member of your family. Strictly in terms of electoral considerations, Rush Limbaugh made a huge mistake. He played his role as a provocateur. Embryonic stem cell research was the subject of President Bush’s only veto so it is not surprising it is an important election issue. What we are seeing in this election is a chance for voters ... to express their opinion on stem cell research.”

Another burning issue is college affordability. In a telephone news conference sponsored by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Oct. 31, pollster Celinda Lake said a recent US-PIRG poll found that 40 percent of voters believe Democrats would do more to make a college education affordable compared to only 11 percent who thought Republicans would.

Paying for a college education is the second highest expenditure people face after purchasing a home, Luke Swartout, PIRG’s coordinator on the issue, told the news conference. With tuition rates soaring, Pell Grants frozen and guaranteed student loans more expensive, college is beyond reach for millions, he said. “It is one of the key pocketbook issues that will motivate voters.”

Trevor Montgomery, an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, Chicago, said the soaring cost of tuition, room and board and books is the “most pressing issue” students raised with him while he was serving as president of student government. “Sadly, last year, when the state budget was submitted, these costs were totally ignored. Students are talking about it in their classrooms, over lunch. Families are discussing it over the dinner table.”

David Hicks, 37, a college graduate living with his wife and children in Evansville, Ind., said his federal student loans are so high and his income so modest he has struggled to stay out of bankruptcy. “The loan repayments are higher than my mortgage,” he said. “I will pay off my mortgage before I pay off our student loans. I will be 54 before I pay it off. I voted for a Republican in the last election. But the issues I and my family face are not being addressed by the candidates.”