People Before Profit blog

FBI destroyed files on anti-Cuba terrorist

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 15:14:00 +0000

This very week it is possible that Luis Posada Carriles will be freed to walk the streets of the United States. The former CIA agent, wanted for terrorism in several countries, will be released basically because the Bush administration refuses to officially classify him as a terrorist, let alone allow him to be extradited to Venezuela or to put him on trial in the U.S.

Posada is “credited” in the CIA’s own documents with conspiring to blow up a Cuban civilian airliner in 1976, an incident in which 73 innocent people (Cubans, Guyanese and Koreans) were brutally murdered. This was the biggest terrorist crime in the history of modern Latin America.

Posada has also bragged of bombings in Cuba in 1997 which killed an Italian tourist, and there are suspicions of involvement in the 1976 murder by car bomb of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his U.S. assistant Ronni Moffitt in the middle of Embassy Row, no less, on Massachusetts Ave. NW, in Washington, D.C.

Posada was arrested in Panama in 2002, when Cuban security tipped off the Panamanian authorities that he and his associates planned to blow up an auditorium at the University of Panama while Fidel Castro was speaking to students there. Hundreds of students would have been killed if the plot had gone forward.

At the time, it was a matter of wonderment that Posada was only convicted in Panamanian courts on relatively minor firearms charges. He was then pardoned by former Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso, who has close connections with the ultra-right-wing elements in Miami’s Cuban exile community.

Long before, Posada’s close associate, Dr. Orlando Bosch, who is also implicated in 1976 bombing of the Cuban airliner, was pardoned by the first President Bush and now lives in Miami.

There are numerous other such persons well connected to the Cuban exile community in Miami. The current President Bush has not had a problem in going down to South Florida and dining with such people. They are part of “his base,” no doubt.

Now we can see how things work. The following article from the Havana-based news agency Prensa Latina, dated Oct. 20, reveals a scandalous datum, namely, that the FBI managed to lose or destroy their file for Posada in 2003, precisely at the time that the Panamanian trial was set to go and thus when such information was of greatest relevance.

FBI agent Hector Pesquera, by the way, was the main hot-dog agent who went after the Cuban Five. So he arrested and prosecuted the five Cubans who were trying to stop the kind of terrorism described here, while destroying the evidence against one of the principal suspected terrorists. That is simply criminal behavior on the part of the FBI. It amounts to total collusion with terrorism.

Ann Louise Bardach, the U.S. journalist who reports on this, is no big friend of the Cuban Revolution, by the way, just an average liberal journalist.

Here’s my question: On the eve of the U.S. midterm elections, isn’t the question of the Bush administration’s collusion in covering up terrorism relevant?

FBI wiped out Posada file

HAVANA (Prensa Latina) — The Federal Bureau of Investigation in Miami destroyed hundreds of pieces of evidence against international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, Granma daily reported Oct. 20.

The newspaper quoted U.S. journalist Ann Louise Bardach on the Democracy Now radio program as saying the original documents in Posada Carriles’ file were wiped out in 2003, while Panamanian justice was trying to gather accusatory facts against him.

“My sources within the FBI were very dismayed, because sometime after 2002, the original files in the evidence room of the Miami FBI were destroyed,” the journalist said. Original Western Union cables and faxes were among those documents, said Bardach, recalling that most courts demand original evidence, not copies or facsimiles.

“Someone made the decision to close the case in 2003, when Posada was fairly much in the news. That is the year we think it happened,” the journalist explained.

The original texts in Posada’s file, kept for years in the Miami FBI safe, were destroyed on the orders of Hector Pesquera, then the head of the FBI and an attorney in South Florida. When the evidence was wiped out in Miami, the Panamanian Attorney’s Office was readying to try Posada Carriles and his three accomplices for the failed assassination attempt against Cuban President Fidel Castro during the Ibero-American Summit in that country.

Following a bilateral agreement, Panamanian legal authorities had urged the U.S. Embassy to hand them over the file of Posada and the Cuban Americans involved. After a long wait, they only received a dossier containing obsolete, insignificant evidence, useless for the case.

Documents declassified by the U.S. intelligence service and disclosed over the last few days have corroborated the U.S. government was always well informed on Posada Carriles’ crimes. He is currently at a detention center in Texas and is only accused of having entered U.S. territory illegally, despite the extradition request by Venezuela to try him for having masterminded the explosion of a Cuban airplane in 1976.

The American Eagle

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 09:38:00 +0000

here in the usa the democratic party the republican party

are the left & right wings of the same scavenging bird of prey

& we know that by rote

even so vote! vote for what’s right by voting for the left

vote against what you deplore

who has perpetrated more terror abroad & created more terrorists where there were none before —

even more than the father — than the son? who or what is more against actualizing

the so-called “american dream” for all of us in the u.s. than george “burning” bush

bald “haliburton” eagle cheney & their state-of-hate regime?

Two provocative movies

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 09:36:00 +0000

The most controversial film at the Toronto Film Festival this year was a title that was at first only identified as “D.O.A.P.” Festival organizers hoped to avoid controversy before the festival by waiting to reveal the full title, “Death of a President.”

This bold and controversial “what if” film, made for British television by director Gabriel Range, was a last-minute entry.

The theme of the fictional film is shocking, with the dramatized assassination of President George W. Bush at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago on Oct. 19, 2007.

The audacious act of selecting President Bush as the victim raised many eyebrows.

Director Range felt using the real president made the film more relevant and realistic. Rather than a sensationalist anti-Bush diatribe, the story sets forth an analysis of what would happen in the aftermath of such a world-shaking event.

Filmed in a clinically detailed fashion, amazingly realistic, the film addresses in what manner the government and the media would go after the perpetrator and how this “next act of terror” would affect our quickly diminishing civil liberties.

The director’s cinematic style in the film shares much in common with another British director, Peter Watkins. Watkins is viewed as the master and originator of the “you are there” style.

Watkins made the Academy Award-winning 1965 film “The War Game,” a realistic, fictional account of a nuclear attack on Britain produced by the BBC for television. So real and frightening were the images in the film that it was ultimately banned and not shown in England until decades later.

Range continues this style with his movie, which won the international critics award at the festival. The critics praised the film “for the audacity with which it distorts reality to reveal a larger truth.”

Clever and seamless splicing of historical footage with the fictional story makes it appear as if you’re watching the real thing. Actual footage of mass protests mixed with acted scenes flows naturally. When Bush goes down in front of the Sheraton Hotel, the audience gasps at the realism, as some protesters cheer while others are overcome with shock.

Cheney’s eulogy at the president’s funeral is cleverly extracted from the speech he gave at Reagan’s funeral, while radio and television reports taken from real programs are edited into the story in a seamless manner.

Range uses this premise to analyze the aftereffects of such an act. Many have pondered the future of our country in the event of another terrorist attack.

“Death of a President” probes the chilling possibilities that might result from our expanding military state, with diminishing civil rights and limited freedoms.

Another featured film was Spike Lee’s masterful “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,” shown on HBO, which received its big screen premiere at the Toronto festival.

Poignant interviews with the survivors of Hurricane Katrina, the worst natural disaster in American history, capture the anger and frustration directed at our government and its slow response to the disaster.

Heartbreaking footage of people describes how they tried to overcome the force of Katrina and the tragic failure of a timely and adequate support system. Many stories, quite often involving poor people of color, relate how local residents were victimized and intentionally overlooked by our government.

Lee also reveals several interviews that speak to the serious rumors of an intentional breach of the levees.

The film soundtracks a moving musical score by jazz great Terrence Blanchard, who is also interviewed and shown walking with his trumpet through the devastated streets of his hometown.

This compelling and moving four-part documentary is one of Spike Lee’s best.

WHATS REALLY GOOD

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 09:22:00 +0000

Tomato workers order justice from McDonald’s

Twenty members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and their allies toured campuses and communities in Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana, Oct. 13-24, with a message to consumers and McDonald’s executives: “There’s sweatshop tomatoes under the Golden Arches!”

CIW is a membership-led organization of mostly Latino, Haitian and Mayan Indian low-wage immigrant workers based in southwest Florida. They have been organizing for over a decade to eliminate cases of modern-day slavery there.

CIW teamed up with the Student/Farmworker Alliance, which has called for two days of actions on Oct. 27-28 to support the workers, and the United Students Against Sweatshops. The campaign hopes to spread awareness and apply pressure on McDonald’s to take the steps necessary end human rights abuses in the tomato fields and to win higher wages for the workers.

The tour picketed at McD’s headquarters outside of Chicago on Oct. 20.

In 2005, the CIW and its allies, after a four-year boycott of Taco Bell, reached a historic agreement with the fast food company to increase wages and improve working conditions through a stricter code of conduct. For more information go to www.ciw-online.org.

Historians hold teach-ins on Iraq war

An urgent call for nationwide teach-ins on the Iraq war leading up to Election Day has been issued by Historians Against the War. As the violence in Iraq and across the Middle East intensifies, along with attacks on civil liberties here in the U.S., HAW says the need for informed public debate is vitally important, especially with midterm elections approaching.

Their web site reads, “As historians, concerned scholars, students and activists, we are acutely aware that the transformations now occurring have far-reaching implications for our current lives and for future generations.” HAW appealed to professors and students across the country to help organize the events. As of Oct. 18, at least 40 teach-ins were slated to take place.

HAW asks, “Why is the U.S. still occupying Iraq? How and when can we withdraw? And what are the prospects for a new war in Iran or Syria?” HAW has prepared a list of speakers for events with leaders from United for Peace and Justice, Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Parents, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the National Youth and Students Peace Coalition. For more info: www.historiansagainstwar.org/teachin/.

Illinois schools plan to dump Coke

Dominican University in northern Illinois has recently stopped the sale of Coke products on campus and has entered an exclusive agreement with Pepsi, in part because of student concerns that Coke is involved in human-rights abuses against its workers in Columbia.

The Campaign to Stop Killer Coke says it has set up shop on more than 150 campuses around the world, urging schools to stop business with the soft drink giant. According to the campaign, 30 schools have dropped Coke. In Miami, the campaign has filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Corporation and a bottling company in Colombia. The lawsuit states that Coke bottlers there have “contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces who murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or silenced union leaders.” The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana as well as DePaul University in Chicago have also considered dumping coke for Pepsi, due to student protests and ongoing investigative reports about the subject. Erika Corona, a student at U of I in Urbana and a member of Students for Peace and Justice there, said, “Our school is a promoter of social justice; we’d be going back on our word if we did sell Coke.”

Law students defend youth against ‘Cocaine’

Five second-year law students and their professor at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law are opposing the trademark “Cocaine” for a high-caffeine, high-sugar energy drink that is being marketed to children and young adults.

Redux Beverages LLC, a Las Vegas company, and its co-founder James Kirby are using Cocaine as the name for their new soft drink, which is being sold at bars and stores, mostly in New York and in California.

The Cleveland State University students, on behalf of the Progressive Intellectual Property Law Association and Americans for Drug Free Youth Inc., oppose the drink trademark, saying it is “immoral and scandalous,” and therefore in violation of federal law.

— Compiled by Pepe Lozano (plozano@pww.org).

CARTOON

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 09:09:00 +0000

Racism and Illinois 6th CD

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 09:04:00 +0000

Barring an October surprise, the Republican ultra-right is staring at a potential historic defeat on Election Day, one that will create a more favorable environment for labor and its allies to wage the fight for a new agenda. The Republican Party is in emergency mode to save what seats it can. It is abandoning races where it faces certain defeat and going all out to construct a “firewall” to save its majority.

Two of these “last stand” seats are in Illinois congressional districts where Republicans have historically had a registration advantage. These are the 8th CD where Rep. Melissa Bean faces arch-reactionary Republican David McSweeney and in the 6th CD where Iraq war vet Tammy Duckworth is battling Bush-clone state Sen. Peter Roskam for the open seat vacated by Rep. Henry Hyde. Both districts cover a wide swath of the suburbs ringing Chicago.

While Bean leads in the 8th CD, the Duckworth-Roskam race is a toss-up. The 6th CD is the heart of the state Republican machine, but its demographics have been changing rapidly. Many working-class families are moving in from Chicago and nearly 30 percent of the district is Latino, Asian or African American. The largest share of the electorate is now independent voters.

It is therefore to its eternal shame that the Republican Party is constructing this “firewall” with the bricks of anti-Mexican racism and immigrant-bashing. They are flooding the airwaves with hysterical scenes of Mexicans scaling border fences and flooding into the U.S. illegally.

Duckworth, they say, can’t and won’t stand up to this onslaught and in addition, supports legislation sponsored by liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy (no mention of Republican co-sponsor John McCain) providing amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

This is a desperate and despicable act by the Republican ultra-right, who have lost the majority of voters, including a sizeable section of Republicans in the district, on every other issue — such as fighting terrorism, the Iraq war, Social Security, health care reform, minimum wage increase, stem cell research, and reproductive choice.

Whipping up the dust of anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant hysteria can result in blinding the electorate to Roskam’s extremist positions. The racist appeal is directed to the undecided 17 percent of voters, mostly Republicans, who strongly dislike Bush but who are not yet convinced to vote for Duckworth.

The anti-Mexican racism is a cousin of the infamous Willie Horton ad of the 1988 presidential election, the massive Republican-engineered disenfranchisement of African American and other minority voters in the 2000 and 2004 elections, and voter suppression in this election.

Roskam supports HR 4437, sponsored by Rep. James Sensenbrenner and passed by the House of Representatives, which would criminalize the 15 million undocumented immigrant workers and those who aid them. It was introduced to divide the electorate, appeal to people’s fears and turn out the Republican vote.

Duckworth, who is of Thai ancestry and whose mother became a U.S. citizen, supports the McCain-Kennedy bill and its companion HR 2230. This legislation creates a process for undocumented immigrants to gain conditional legal status and eventually citizenship. It has some provisions unacceptable to the AFL-CIO, immigrant rights and other organizations. But other unions, immigrant groups and business associations support it as an acceptable compromise for the time being.

A recent town hall meeting on immigration sponsored by immigrant rights and religious groups extended invitations to both candidates. Not surprisingly Roskam never responded. Duckworth accepted and was sharply questioned about her position. Noting the presence of a Roskam campaign camera crew in the hall and acknowledging that everything she said would be used against her, she stuck with her support for McCain-Kennedy.

Even though Duckworth’s response included an emphasis on heavy border security and wasn’t everything many of those present wanted to hear, they nonetheless gave her a standing ovation because she represents a voice against the anti-immigrant racism of Roskam.

Will racism and anti-immigrant hysteria be rejected on Nov. 7? Labor and its allies, who have been knocking on thousands of doors in the 6th CD and who are gearing up for a massive get-out-the-vote effort, fully expect the answer to be a resounding yes!

John Bachtell (jbachtell@rednet.org) is district organizer of the Communist Party of Illinois.

EDITORIAL: Ghouls and goblins

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 08:55:00 +0000

Karl Rove, the political vampire of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, surely wishes he could reschedule Halloween to Nov. 7, turning the day we cast our ballots in the midterm elections into a ghoulish orgy of Republican tricks, dirty tricks.

Fear is a mainstay of Halloween, but it’s all for fun. The Bush-Cheney administration has made it the mainstay of their political strategy, and it’s deadly.

Ever since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, they have unleashed a barrage of color-coded alarms and hysteria that those who oppose the Iraq war, the Patriot Act, and torture of “enemy combatants” (innocent or not) are endangering national security.

The strategy worked in the 2002 and 2004 elections with fear and smear tactics such as the 2002 television ad that juxtaposed photos of Osama bin Laden and Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.), as if the triple amputee Vietnam veteran was an al-Qaeda fellow traveler. Saxby Chambliss won using that rotten trick. Similarly, in the 2004 presidential election, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ran scurrilous TV ads that smeared Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a decorated war veteran, founder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, as a virtual traitor.

Rove planned the same script for this election, with Republicans running on the slogan “stay the course” while baiting the Democrats as “cut and run” appeasers. But it backfired so badly that the White House now says Bush will no longer utter the words “stay the course.” And “cut and run” smear attacks are getting no traction.

Instead of fear, there is a mood of anger and a determination to oust the warmongers and fearmongers from office. There is anger about the atrocious Iraq war, the callous disregard of human lives, the hypocrisy, sleaze and corruption, the billions handed to Halliburton and other crony corporations, the tax giveaways to the rich and cuts in vital government services.

As we take our kids out trick or treating, or hand out candy to the small ghosts and witches that knock on our doors, we look forward to helping turn out a big vote to oust the real ghouls from Congress.

Detroit medical students rally to save training program

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 06:58:00 +0000

Privatization push may be undermining university-hospital partnership

DETROIT — The concept of “going to the doctor” for a mild health problem does not exist for many Americans. They are forced to wait until their condition has become an emergency before they can afford time away from work. Many times, by this point, the mild condition has become exponentially worse. This drastically drives up the cost of health care. These unnecessary complications between money and health care have become a paramount issue in Detroit.

“Who wants a contract? Detroit wants a contract!” These words reverberated off the walls of the hospitals of the Detroit Medical Center on Oct. 13. Fearing a closure of their medical residency training programs and an impending health care crisis for metropolitan Detroit, 500 resident physicians and Wayne State University Medical students gathered at a rally jointly sponsored by the university and the DMC.

Under a longstanding partnership between the two institutions, medical residents from Wayne State train and practice medicine at the DMC. But many here fear that the efforts of the hospital’s CEO Mike Duggan to transform the DMC from a public nonprofit hospital into a for-profit may be moving the hospital to pull out of the partnership. The privatization push may be the reason behind the two institutions’ inability over a five-year period to renew their contract. Instead, the partnership has been functioning under successive contract extensions since 2001.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has made it clear that there will be no more extensions beyond a Dec. 31 deadline. The failure of previous negotiations already resulted in the closure of one of the nation’s largest orthopedic surgery residency programs at the end of the last academic year.

Failure to sign a contract would cause an immediate health care crisis here. The university, with the nation’s largest medical school, would lose medical student rotation sites as well as their residency programs at the DMC. The 850 residents of Wayne State who train and practice medicine at the DMC would have to relocate. Replacing a number this large might be impossible.

The hospital’s functioning would be severely impacted. University faculty members account for 80 percent of the DMC’s services and 65 percent of its revenue. To replace them, DMC will have to hire private physicians. The only option I can foresee is for the DMC to drastically decrease its services to the underserved and uninsured.

This situation would threaten the financial stability and resource availability of all health care systems in metropolitan Detroit, causing a health care crisis in the region.

The United States spends more than any other country on health care. Yet, as a country, we are not even in the top 20 nations for health care results.

Although our health care system shows great success in treating upper-middle-class patients and beyond, we are failing our patients in the rural and urban areas of our country.

The failure of our country to not “cover everybody” has led to millions of our people going through life without health insurance. As a medical student at Wayne State and a native Detroiter, this population is visible to me every day.

I fear that if this contract negotiation ends in failure, money will once again win, with the people most in need of health care being the ultimate losers.

— submitted by a concerned Wayne State medical student

Unions on the move in North Carolina

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 06:54:00 +0000

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — “Unions seem to be becoming more and more active in North Carolina,” Jack Hawke, a former state Republican Party chairman, warned fellow conservatives at a recent Raleigh event. “And a lot of money is being thrown around this year.”

A statewide minimum wage increase, the largest raises for state government employees in 15 years and measured success resulting from a Raleigh sanitation worker walkout last month has boosted confidence within the organized labor community. The state’s minimum wage which will rise by $1 to $6.15 per hour Jan. 1 after the General Assembly’s approval this year.

“There were some significant victories for workers in 2006,” said MaryBe McMillan with the state AFL-CIO, whose member unions include about 110,000 active or retired workers in North Carolina. “There’s more interest now in unions and organized labor because workers have had enough.”

Labor unions are now trying to build on that momentum by spending campaign money on legislative races. They hope worker discontent with eroding health and retirement benefits will move supportive voters to the polls come Election Day.

The Service Employees International Union is the most active in North Carolina campaigns, thanks to a five-year partnership with the 55,000-member State Employees Association of North Carolina. The association lobbies for workers at the General Assembly but is not a union.

The partnership allows union leaders to gain access to political strategies that contribute to the association’s success in a Southern state where collective bargaining by public employees is specifically prohibited. In exchange, the union is spending much more money on legislative races than the association’s political action committee could put up.

As of June 30, the union had spent more than $800,000 since 2004 on fliers, get-out-the-vote efforts and ads for several legislative candidates, according to campaign finance reports and NC FREE, a business-sponsored research group that tracks legislative campaigns.

United Electrical Workers Local 150, which has about 3,000 members statewide, including Raleigh sanitation workers and university system housekeepers, is taking a different track toward seeking collective bargaining. Mexican and Canadian allies are filing a complaint alleging that the state’s bargaining ban violates a labor deal linked to the North American Free Trade Agreement. In the developed world, “public workers have this fundamental workers’ right, that fundamental human right, to have their union collectively bargain,” said Azanga Laughinghouse, president of the 3,000-member local.

While active union membership in North Carolina grew by 10 percent from 2004 to 2005 to 107,000 workers, only 2.9 percent of North Carolina’s overall workforce were union members in 2005, the lowest in the country save for South Carolina, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. North Carolina is a right-to-work state.

Andrew Perrin, a sociology professor and labor relations expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the labor atmosphere may be improving as transplanted residents expect the same kind of union protections they received in their home states.

North Carolina has “been pretty much at the bottom of labor organizing, and at some point it’s got to end,” Perrin said.

THIS WEEK IN LABOR

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 06:49:00 +0000

Goodyear strike solid

“Our people are solid. We haven’t had anyone cross the line,” USW Local 12 President Dennis Battles told the World Oct. 24. The threatened closure of Goodyear’s plant in Gadsden, Ala., along with the company’s Tyler, Texas, facility was the main issue precipitating the strike at 16 plants which began Oct. 5.

“The issue is jobs — jobs in the USA,” said Battles. Among the Gadsden plant’s 1,250 strikers are hundreds of transplants from both Akron, Ohio, and Huntsville, Ala., who made the move when their respective plants closed.

Florida Wal-Mart workers walk off the job

Nearly 200 Wal-Mart workers weren’t wearing smiley faces when they walked out of their store in the Miami suburb of Hialeah Gardens, Oct. 16, protesting management’s move to cut their work hours. Almost the entire morning shift rallied outside the store, Business Week reported, shouting “We want justice,” and “Forty hours, forty hours,” during an hour-long demonstration.

The workers also oppose new corporate-wide policies cracking down on “unexcused absences” and instituting scheduling policies that will vary their days off from week to week.

Shifts will now be set arbitrarily by a computer in company headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., interfering with childcare arrangements and the ability of workers to work second jobs, according to two department managers who initiated the protest action.

The cut in working hours are in line with a Business Week report that Wal-Mart executives recently told Wall Street analysts that the company wants to transform its workforce from 20 percent part-time to 40 percent part-time, and to get rid of full-time and unhealthy employees who are more expensive for the company to retain.

Faced with 400 employee signatures on a protest letter, Wal-Mart backed down on at least one of its moves and restored the cut hours for the Hialeh Garden workers. The corporate office blamed the cut on a store manager’s “mistake.”

U.S. charged with int’l labor law violations

The recent set of NLRB decisions that threaten to strip millions of U.S. workers of their union organizing rights violates international labor standards, a complaint by the AFL-CIO to the United Nations’ International Labor Organization charged. The complaint, filed Oct. 23, says that through this decision the U.S. government denies workers’ their right to form and join trade unions in violation of the principles of freedom of association.

The NLRB cases, known as the “Kentucky River” decisions, allow employers to reclassify professionals who work alongside non-professionals as well as workers who act as group leaders, line leaders, lead persons, or workplace coordinators all as “supervisors.” With that designation, employers would have legal immunity to fire or discipline them for union activity.

ILO principles state that all workers “without distinction whatsoever” have the right to freedom of association. In previous cases, the ILO’s Committee on Freedom of Association has ruled that changing employees’ status to undermine the membership of workers’ trade unions is contrary to the principle of freedom of association.

Stuck with Stickler, mine safety down the shaft

With a total of 40 coal miners having been killed on the job this year, even a Republican-controlled Congress was hard pressed to approve President Bush’s nomination of a coal company executive as head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. After the Senate twice rejected Richard Stickler, known for favoring production over safety, Bush used a recess appointment to put his nominee in office. “The pleas of coal miners throughout the land for him to appoint a strong advocate for their safety to that position have fallen on deaf ears. The companies are in charge of mine safety in America, not the safety professionals,” said Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts.

AK Steel workers won’t go back without pension guarantee

After eight months on the picket line, workers at AK Steel in Middletown, Ohio, members of International Association of Machinists Lodge 1943 rejected a contract that didn’t guarantee the pension provisions and working conditions they demanded. The vote was 1,050 to 489. The Associated Press reported that a roar of approval drowned out the initial announcement at the union hall, which is located within sight of the mill.

The rejected contract would have given the company the sole right to withdraw from the IAM National Pension Plan and substitute a 401(k) plan. Members also objected to the company’s proposed back-to-work terms which included a six-month period in which union members would be required to work and even be retrained by “replacement workers.”

In July, AK Steel workers voted to affiliate their formerly independent union with the IAM in order to boost their bargaining strength.

Striking janitors sweep across Houston

Houston janitors put down their brooms and picked up picket signs in the first wave of a well-prepared strike that their union says could escalate and spread nationwide. The Service Employees International Union charges five large national cleaning companies with failure to bargain in good faith.

The janitors typically earn just $20 a day for part time work and have no health insurance coverage.

Night shift workers who do the cleaning of the majority of Houston’s downtown office space walked off their jobs Oct. 23 and marched straight to “strike boot camp” where they broke into teams to review strike strategy.

As the strike expands, it could spread to other parts of Houston as well as to other cities, says the union. “Union janitors in other cities who work for the same national cleaning companies have pledged to do whatever it takes to help Houston janitors win a fair contract, including honoring the picket lines of the Houston janitors,” said a union statement. Last week janitors from other cities contributed $1 million to the Houston janitors’ growing strike fund.

Contract talks for the 5,300 workers ended several days earlier with the companies — ABM, OneSource, GCA, Sanitors and Pritchard — refusing the workers’ demands for more hours, health insurance and a pay raise to $8.50 an hour.

This Week in Labor is compiled by Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org). Pat Burnham in Houston contributed.

WORLD NOTES

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 06:45:00 +0000

Britain: Bosses bag big pay

Income Data Services has reported that heads of Britain’s 100 largest corporations got a 43 percent pay hike last year. Their average basic salary rose 9 percent to £730,796 (about $1.4 million) and bonuses tied to company profits accounted to approximately the same amount. What with other financial benefits worth £51,167 ($96,000) plus non-cash payments like share options and long-term incentive plans, they each averaged out at £2.9 million apiece ($5.4 million), about 45 percent more than last year. That’s 86 times the pay received by individual British employees.

Median pay for the top 100 U.S. chief executives in 2005 was 500 times that for individual workers, up from 35 times greater in 1970.

Britain’s best-paid businessperson in 2005 was advertising executive Sir Martin Sorrell who accumulated £17.1 million ($32.1 million). An unnamed business leader, quoted by the BBC, explained the high figures by saying “leadership skills” are in great demand.

Israel: Students refuse military service

Tel Aviv high school students Omri Evron, 19, and Lior Wolinic, 18, have opted out of Israeli military service set to begin in November. With other students, they signed a letter proclaiming their refusal to be “soldiers of the occupation” and hung anti-occupation banners from highway bridges.

At a preliminary trial for his opting out of obeying military orders, Evron, member of the Young Communist League, was sentenced to 14 or more days in a military prison. Supporters demonstrated outside the military base as his hearing began. Evron’s letter to his judges was quoted in the rebelion.org report; he denounced “the prolonged occupation which sows hate and terror between the two peoples.” He refused to “serve an ideology that doesn’t recognize ... self determination and peaceful co-existence.” Nor would he be a “guinea pig for the arms industry, the big corporations, and all kinds of exploiting contractors that sow racism” for the sake of profits, he said.

Philippines: Bishop Ramento, gov’t critic, killed

Joined by progressives and church leaders the world over, Philippine unionists, human rights activists, and revolutionaries are mourning the Oct. 3 murder of Bishop Alberto Ramento in Tarlac City. The bishop is widely viewed as a martyr for democracy and labor rights, according to the report on Banyanusa.org.

Although the government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo quickly produced four youths said to have robbed and killed Ramento, critics attribute his violent death to elements enraged by his long record of support for strikers and resistance movements and his persistent denunciations of extra-judicial killings and rampant human right violations.

Ramento, the former chair of the Ecumenical Bishops Forum and the Philippine National Council of Churches, also served as Supreme Bishop of the Philippine Independent Church, the largest church alternative to the Catholic Church in the Philippines and a legacy of the revolution against Spanish colonialism.

Kenya: College teachers strike over pay

Classes in at least six Kenyan public universities were paralyzed Oct. 23 when thousands of college lecturers went on strike over a pay dispute, the East African Standard (Nairobi) reported.

The strike action was most evident at Moi University, Eldoret, where over 2,000 students walked out in solidarity with the striking lecturers. But the effects were felt throughout the university system, which has an enrollment of more than 50,000 students.

Members of the Universities Academic Staff Union (UASU) called the strike, their third in 12 years, to demand a 700 percent increase in their salary, a role in university governance and the creation of a research fund.

The government threatened to fire the strikers, but the lecturers were not to be intimidated. In Nairobi, union officials said they would refuse to obey “colonial laws” prohibiting their action and vowed to press on.

At the Moi campus, students chanted, “Uasu Msilale Bado Mapambano” (UASU do not sleep, the struggle is on). At Kenyatta University, named after Kenya’s legendary independence leader and first president, students supporting the lecturers sang “Solidarity Forever.”

World Notes are compiled by W.T. Whitney Jr. (atwhit@megalink.net).

Czech govt bans youth group, torpedoes democracy

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 06:23:00 +0000

News Analysis

The Czech Republic has become a testing ground for imperialist forces in Europe who seek to outlaw communist activity in the formerly socialist, now European Union-member states.

A case in point is the Czech government’s banning of the Communist Youth Union (KSM) on Oct. 12. Observers say the move sets a dangerous precedent for the rest of Europe and the world.

The government justified its decision by arguing “the KSM program states the necessity to replace private ownership of the means of production with public ownership.” According to government spokeswoman Majka Marsrikova, “This is against the constitution and is incompatible with fundamental democratic principles.”

In response, the youth group’s representatives categorically rejected the charge that their program is against the law and issued a statement exposing the political reasons behind the ministry’s decision. A legal defense campaign has started up both within the Czech Republic and internationally.

The KSM also vowed to continue its struggle to defend the rights of youth and students, young workers and unemployed and to struggle for socialism, regardless of the government’s ruling.

The ban is the result of a longstanding campaign on the part of the government to suppress the communist youth group’s activity, especially in light of its highly successful campaign against the building of U.S. military bases on Czech soil.

To date, local branches of the KSM have gathered over 50,000 signatures against the bases and are demanding that a public referendum on the issue be held. Communist Party deputies in Parliament are pushing for an extraordinary session to consider such a referendum.

Fears about possible U.S. military bases have mounted amid reports that the Pentagon is scheming to avoid public scrutiny by claiming that it only wants to build a radar station. However, given that a recent Gallop poll shows 51 percent of the population finds the proposed military bases “unacceptable” and 61 percent thinks the issue should be put to a referendum, the group’s petition drive has obviously touched a raw nerve.

Looking at the broader picture, anticommunist forces in the Czech Republic targeted the communist movement following the overthrow of socialism in that country, equating Communism with Nazism and penalizing communist activity and ideology.

For example, during last June’s general elections, Girzy Dolis, the Communist Party’s vice-president and a Parliament member, was viciously beaten. Election ballots cast by communist voters were stolen, and people who turned in such ballots to the authorities were rewarded.

Around the same time, government-sponsored T-shirts with the slogan “Fight for peace, kill a Communist” were widely circulated, even being sold in Czech embassies around the world.

The campaign against the KSM has been brewing for a long time. In November 2005, the Czech government demanded that the group change its program and constitution because it “projects the idea of class struggle, and is based on the theories of Marx, Engels and Lenin who call for the violent overthrow of society.”

The authorities gave the KSM a Dec. 31, 2005, deadline to renounce its communist identity. It refused to do so. Due to the massive mobilization of forces both inside and outside of the country, the ministry was forced to extend the deadline to March 4, 2006.

Tens of thousands of signatures against the proposed ban were collected worldwide via the Internet, including from the Nobel Prize-winning playwright Dario Fo, U2 singer Bono and Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas.

But the government refused to relent, and the anti-democratic, anticommunist ban has now been imposed. Progressive forces both in the Czech Republic and beyond it have denounced the move as a blow to democratic rights everywhere.

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

TAKE ACTION

Protest ban on Czech youth group

Send a solidarity e-mail to the Communist Youth Union:

Sign the international petition protesting the ban:

Ask your union, student body, or organization to send a message to the Czech Ministry of the Interior, protesting the ban and demanding that it be immediately lifted:

Battle over UN Security Council seat continues

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 06:18:00 +0000

Argentina vacates a temporary UN Security Council seat on Jan. 1. General Assembly voting for a Latin American and Caribbean replacement candidate stalled on Oct. 23 after Venezuela and Guatemala each failed to gain a required two-thirds majority after 35 votes. The bizarre battle at the United Nations highlights dramatically changed power relations affecting Latin America.

On Oct. 15, Italy, India, Belgium and South Africa each gained two-year Security Council seats without opposition. The only real precedent for a contested Security Council seat comes from 1979 elections to the Security Council involving Cuba and Colombia. Mexico ended up as a compromise choice after three months and 154 votes.

So far this year, except for a sixth-round tie, Guatemala has won all voting sessions, with most Latin American nations favoring Venezuela. On Oct. 20, the Assembly postponed further polling until Oct. 25, when a twice-daily limit on voting took effect. Latin American countries, not yet ready to consider a third country to represent the region, met to assess the candidates.

As the World went to press, news agencies were reporting that Venezuela and Guatemala were considering withdrawing their candidacies in favor of a compromise third nation.

Lacking veto power, short-term Security Council members play second fiddle to five permanent members. Nevertheless, the stakes are high, and Venezuela and the United States — acting on behalf of Guatemala, its Central American protégé — have campaigned vigorously.

According to Venezuela’s UN Ambassador Francisco Arias Cardenas, the issue is “reform of the United Nations ... democratization, which is quite necessary.” President Hugo Chavez has bemoaned the longstanding lock on Security Council power held by France, United States, Russia, Great Britain and China.

Venezuela is concerned too about Washington’s role in lobbying for Guatemala, regarded by many as a leading human rights violator. Arias Cardenas told the press, “If we withdrew, it would be the same as accepting Washington’s veto outside the Security Council to control us, to humiliate us.” Holding up a Spanish newspaper picturing U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton together with his Guatemalan counterpart, he asked, “Why doesn’t Bolton come to this microphone and declare that the United States will remove the pressure, will withdraw the money [and] blackmail?”

Bolton complained about Venezuela “making us put up with this process [with] behavior that we are worried it would have in the council and that would only lead to interruptions.” Venezuela in the Security Council “would not be useful or constructive,” he said.

For Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Venezuela’s election to the council “would be the end of consensus” there. “That’s serious business,” she said.

Political analyst Tariq Ali knows that U.S. concerns extend beyond protocol niceties. “The Venezuelans will use the Security Council as a platform to put an alternative view forward, and we live in a world where alternative views aren’t permitted,” he told Democracy Now. “Latin American leaders have a social vision.”

President Chavez himself promised that once on the Security Council, Venezuela would become the “voice of the South.”

That voice will come with teeth, according to one observer, who notes that Venezuela’s use of petroleum profits for social missions has garnered wide regional and international support. Venezuela’s cross-border hydrocarbon pipelines, its founding of a continent-wide television network, and its establishment of the Bank of the South has increased its stature as a progenitor of Latin American unity.

Recent agreements with China on oil, banking and transportation worth $11 billion are seen as bolstering Venezuela’s international influence.

For Venezuela to join the Security Council would be intolerable for Washington, writes another commentator, especially in view of Chavez’s blistering criticisms of the Bush administration’s policies at the recent UN summit.

The U.S. bid to isolate Venezuela has recently taken the form of an attempt to link the country’s leadership with terrorism. Fox News reported Oct. 16 that the House Internal Security Committee heard testimony that “the Venezuelan president is collaborating with potential terrorists and is helping them sneak into the United States.” In this far-fetched scenario, Chavez is purportedly smuggling Middle Eastern terrorists into Venezuela for Spanish lessons, equipping them to infiltrate Mexico and ultimately the United States.

Venezuela scoffs at such wild claims.

Caracas-based lawyer Eva Golinger writes, “The United States will keep on doing everything possible to destroy the Bolivarian Revolution, impede the presidential elections in December and look for a way to intervene ‘legally.’”

But, she adds, “What the elections for the Security Council confirms for us is that Venezuela is not alone.”

atwhit@megalink.net

On the eve of change, your help is needed

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 05:28:00 +0000

Dear Readers,

Who would have thunk it? After George W. Bush won reelection in 2004, who would have thought that such a potential political earthquake would be taking place in two years? The tectonic plates are shifting against the Bush administration and its agenda. Issues that burn deeply in the furnaces of public opinion are Iraq, Katrina, the economy and health care, checks and balances of the government.

In her Jan. 7 article, “A resolution for 2006: Take back Congress,” Communist Party leader Joelle Fishman wrote, “The battle for the House and Senate looms large with the arrival of the new year, as opposition mounts to the Bush administration agenda. While some pundits give only a small chance for Democrats to regain control of Congress in November’s elections, the shifting mood in the country predicts otherwise.” How right she was!

Since then the People’s Weekly World has covered the developing electoral battle for Congress every week.

And now the country is less than two weeks away from perhaps the most historic midterm elections in decades. At stake are the future of the country and the lives of our vast majority of working families of all races, religions, nationalities and make-up. In balance hang the prospects of peace in the Middle East, on the Korean peninsula and elsewhere in the world. Opinion polls won’t mean a thing if they don’t translate to votes.

Imagine waking up on Nov. 8 to see the same pro-Bush Republicans running the Congress and realizing that you didn’t do your part to not only vote, but bring others to vote and protect the ballots cast.

Unions, civil rights organizations, women’s groups — just to name a few — are doing door-to-door canvassing for candidates, election protection work and phone-banking to guarantee a new Congress is elected that will stand up to the Bush administration onslaught on democracy, security and global citizenship. If you aren’t already involved, I hope every reader of the PWW and Nuestro Mundo gets involved in the next week and on Election Day in this historic political struggle to “Take Back Congress” from Bush’s ultra-right Republican and corporate control.

The stakes are high, but with united effort history can be made.

In solidarity,

Terrie Albano

Editor

GOP candidates losing ground with Calif. voters

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 06:46:00 +0000

Voters’ growing dissatisfaction with Republican incumbents is evident in California.

A new poll by the highly regarded Rasmussen polling firm shows Phil Angelides, Democratic candidate for governor, starting to close the gap with Republican incumbent Arnold Schwarzenegger. The poll, taken before new Angelides and union-sponsored ads hit TV screens, showed 40 percent of likely voters favoring Angelides, to 49 percent for Schwarzenegger. Previous polls had shown a gap of up to 17 percent. Analysts point out that despite big spending on ads, the governor has been unable to break 49 percent.

Another new survey, of “Spanish-dominant” likely voters in Southern California, found Angelides leading Schwarzenegger by 64 percent to 21 percent. Spanish-dominant Latinos account for about 10 percent of California voters, while Latinos as a whole account for about 18 percent. The Bendixen and Associates poll was conducted in three counties that are more Republican than other parts of the state.

Polls also held good news for Democratic challenger Jerry McNerney, who seeks to replace longtime Republican incumbent Richard Pombo as U.S. Representative from northern California’s 11th Congressional District. A new Lake Research Partners survey of likely voters showed Pombo at 41 percent and McNerney at 40 percent. When each candidate received a positive introduction, McNerney surged ahead, 49 percent to 39 percent. McNerney has been endorsed by the San Francisco Chronicle, Modesto Bee and San Jose Mercury News, while the Los Angeles Times editorialized that Pombo is one of two “Congressmen we could do without.”

In another northern California race, Democratic challenger Charlie Brown is benefiting from reports confirming that the Justice Department is investigating 4th CD Republican incumbent John Doolittle in the ongoing probe of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s bribery of members of Congress. The Washington Post cited lawyers and witnesses as confirming that Doolittle is targeted in the ongoing investigation in which eight Republican leaders and staffers have pleaded guilty. Brown has also been endorsed by the San Jose Mercury News, as well as the Sacramento Bee and Modoc County Record.

Films zoom in on U.S. politics

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 06:33:00 +0000

Several films dealing with American politics and social issues were premiered at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

“Bobby” features a star-studded cast, including Martin Sheen, Harry Belafonte, Demi Moore and Anthony Hopkins, to name a few. Several intertwined stories, inserted with archival footage of the time, center around the lives of employees and guests who happened to be in the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel the fateful night Robert Kennedy was assassinated.

Filming took place in the actual hotel just before it was demolished. Stories include a young couple who married to keep the groom out of the Vietnam War, a racist kitchen manager dealing with a multiracial crew, campaign managers dealing with the drug scene, an old doorman who reminisces with a fellow retiree about the hotel’s history, all taking place as Kennedy is arriving to give the final speech of his life.

The film is an engrossing layer of stories with superb acting and direction by Emilio Estevez. All the actors were so committed to the story they offered to work for scale. Many had known Kennedy personally. Martin Sheen had taken his 6-year-old son, Emilio, to the Ambassador Hotel days after the tragedy and the memory stayed with Estevez and inspired him in the making of this film.

“Bobby” closes with a hopeful statement for peace and justice reminding us of the charismatic Robert Kennedy who had dreams and plans for this country that were never realized.

“What I think is quite clear is that we can work together in the last analysis,” said RFK in his last speech on June 5, 1968. “And that what has been going on with the United States over the period of the last three years — the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society … whether it’s between Blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, or between age groups or over the war in Vietnam — that we can start to work together again. We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country. And I intend to make that my basis for running.”

One of the many new documentaries about American politics focuses on the 2004 national elections and the pivotal role of the Ohio vote. No president has won without carrying the state since 1960.

“So Goes the Nation” analyses the flow of money and resources and the people in both campaigns. Charges of fraud are examined, but the fundamental focus is on the process of the election, politicians and activists in what the world has come to expect is the most democratic electoral process. Many know otherwise. This film serves a purpose but there are several others dealing with the issues of election fraud, voting machine irregularity and outright manipulation of the vote.

“Lake of Fire” by Tony Kaye (“American History X”) is a 20-year project and the definitive film study of the intense abortion debate. Doctors are murdered, women die from failed abortion attempts, Roe v. Wade is being challenged, and there are extremists who would like to return our society to the Dark Ages. They are all studied in close depth in this unparalleled documentary. Emotionally charged and amazingly evenhanded with impassioned pleas from both sides of the battle, this film challenges the viewer to find a resolve in this heated national debate.

Gripping narrative of an Iraqi trade unionist

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 06:31:00 +0000

Hadi Never Died: Hadi Saleh and the Iraqi Trade Unions

Abdullah Muhsin and Alan Johnson

London, Trades Union Congress, 2006

Softcover, 80 pp., $18.60 plus shipping

Order from www.tuc.org.uk/publications

Although Iraq is foremost in our thoughts, the condition and struggles of Iraqi workers remain the least discussed aspects of life there. Few outside the Arab world know that the Iraqi working class has been one of the best-organized, most politically engaged working classes in that region. As “Hadi Never Died” by Abdullah Muhsin and Alan Johnson relates, Iraqi workers have been at the forefront of their country’s history from its independence struggle to the battle against the Saddam Hussein dictatorship and now the continued occupation of Iraq.

The book focuses on the life of Iraqi trade union and Communist Party leader Hadi Saleh. Saleh was born in the southern town of Nasiriyyah one year after a key moment in Iraqi history called Al-Wathbah, The Leap, an uprising of workers and their allies against British imperial control. In January 1948, thousands of students and railway workers marched in Baghdad. Though government police murdered hundreds, the uprising forced the prime minister into exile in England. Strikes in the port city of Basra just weeks later also nearly brought the British-backed monarchy to its knees. Within 10 years, another uprising of hundreds of thousands in Baghdad and other cities ended the monarchy and British control. The leading political forces in this movement were the Iraqi working class led by its unions and the Iraqi Communist Party.

Subsequent power struggles among military leaders ultimately led to the rise of the Ba’ath Party by the late 1960s. To consolidate power, Ba’ath Party leaders ordered the arrest of thousands of potential political opponents, including Saleh, a union printer and Communist Party activist, then only 20 years old. Along with many comrades and friends, Saleh was tortured at the Qassr al-Nihayah prison and sentenced to death. By the time Saddam Hussein seized power in the late 1970s, the trade unions had become a means for the government to spy on workers and to conscript them into military service.

Saleh escaped death in 1969, but was later forced into exile first in South Yemen and then Syria where he helped organize the Workers Democratic Trade Union Movement (WDTUM) in 1980. Taking the name Abu Farat, Saleh forged strong links to the international trade union movement, especially the British trade unions. Saleh was instrumental in convincing the Trades Union Congress to organize the Campaign Against the Repression of Democratic Rights in Iraq.

In 1984, the WDTUM helped organize a strike of 4,000 tobacco workers in Iraqi Kurdistan. In 1987, WDTUM in Kurdistan publicly demonstrated against a chemical attack ordered by the Saddam Hussein regime at Sheikh Wesana that killed many people. After the protest, government police summarily executed 23 people they claimed were protest leaders. WDTUM activists, at great personal risk, organized to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime throughout its 24-year history.

In 2003, WDTUM activists marched against the Bush administration’s planned invasion of Iraq, “conscious that the victims would be once again Iraqi workers and innocent civilians.” Within weeks after his return home in April 2003, Saleh and other WDTUM leaders prepared to launch a new democratic trade union movement. They appealed to Iraqi workers to “unite, and speak with one voice, so as to serve Iraqi working people.”

Again the Iraqi working class sought to organize workers both to improve their lives and to help lead the rebuilding of their country along democratic lines. On May 16, 2003, several hundred trade union leaders formed the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU). Saleh, chosen as a member of the executive committee, was assigned as international secretary.

Harassed both by regime supporters and by occupation forces, the IFTU organized about 200,000 workers by 2004 in the worst of conditions. Amid economic collapse and a security and political vacuum, and under semi-legal status, the IFTU quickly became a leading force in Iraq. In December 2004, the IFTU presented broad demands it saw as key to reconstruction: an end to the occupation, building democracy, a halt to privatization, establishment of social welfare, women’s equality, scrapping anti-union laws, implementation of basic workers’ rights, and banning forced and child labor.

Less than four weeks later, on Jan. 4, 2005, Hadi Saleh was murdered in his home in Baghdad. His comrades believe that supporters of the Saddam Hussein regime murdered him out of revenge. Saleh was survived by his wife, two children and several grandchildren.

Saleh’s murder prompted an enormous outcry by trade union leaders around the world. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney praised Saleh for his dedication to the movement saying, “He will be sorely missed by all of us who have met him and by the workers for whom he valiantly fought.”

This book’s short but valuable contribution to the history of the Iraqi working class as embodied in the life of Hadi Saleh helps bring a new view of Iraq. Saleh represented well the still worthwhile slogan, “Workers of the world, unite.” The book is worth careful consideration by those in the world’s peace and labor movements who have expressed serious interest in Iraq’s destiny.

CARTOON

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 06:17:00 +0000

The Republican record on Social Security

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 05:53:00 +0000

1935: Almost all Republicans in Congress oppose the creation of Social Security.

1939: 75percent of Republicans in Senate try to kill legislation providing Social Security benefits to dependents and survivors as well as retired workers.

1950: 79 percent of House and 89 percent of Senate Republicans vote against disability insurance to defeat it.

1956: 86 percent of Republicans in Senate oppose disability insurance; program approved nonetheless.

1964: Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan both suggest that Social Security be made voluntary.

1965: 93 percent of Republicans in House and 62 percent in Senate vote to kill Medicare.

1977: 58 percent of Senate votes against amendment to provide semiannual increases.

1977: 88 percent of Republicans in House and 63 percent in Senate vote against increase in Social Security payroll tax needed to keep system solvent.

1981: White House proposes $35 billion in Social Security cuts over the next 5 years. The cuts would have included elimination of student benefits, lump-sum death benefits, and a retroactive elimination of the $122 minimum benefit for three million recipients. (Congress ultimately enacted $24 billion of the proposed cuts.)

1981: Reagan administration begins a wholesale review of the Social Security Disability rolls, resulting in over 560,000 eligibility investigations in 1982 — 360,000 more than the year before. Ultimately, at least 106,000 families were removed from the rolls.

1981: 99 percent of Republicans in House and 98 percent in Senate vote for legislation containing $22 billion in Social Security and Medicare cuts.

1981: Reagan administration proposes three-month delay in 1982 cost-of-living increases.

1981: White House proposes $200 billion in Social Security cuts between 1982 and 1990. The cuts include reduction in early retirement benefit; tightened disability eligibility standards; delay in the 1982 cost-of-living adjustment and a 10 percent eventual reduction in benefits for all new retirees. (The U.S. Senate repudiated the President’s proposals by a vote of 96 to 0.)

1982: The President and Senate Republicans propose $40 billion in benefit cuts over three fiscal years.

1985: Administration backs attempts by Republican Senate leadership to eliminate the 1986 Social Security COLA. Vice President Bush casts the tie-breaking vote to eliminate COLA. (House defeats it – it was never enacted.)

1990s: Efforts to end Social Security took the form of appealing to younger workers to put “their” Social Security insurance payments into the stock market.

2005: Labor-led fight against privatization saved Social Security for the time being.

2006: President Bush, once again, includes privatization of Social Security in his 2007 budget.

Source: AFL-CIO

THIS WEEK IN LABOR

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 05:36:00 +0000

North American labor solidarity

Labor organizations in Mexico, Canada and the United States are joining together to file a formal charge against the U.S. under the North American Agreement for Labor Cooperation. NAALC is the labor side agreement to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Over 25 labor groups in the three countries are signing on to the complaint which will be formally filed in Mexico on Oct. 17 by that country’s Frente Autentico del Trabajo.

The U.S. and the state of North Carolina are violating NAALC and international law by denying the right to engage in collective bargaining to 650,000 public employees in that state, the groups charge.

Steelworkers spokesman Dan Kovalik said a strike by Raleigh, N.C., sanitation workers on Sept. 13-14 dramatized the workers’ frustration with the lack of collective bargaining, which is prohibited for state and local government employees by the state’s General Statute 95-98. The NAALC, signed by the U.S., Mexico and Canada, lists freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining among its core principles. These rights are also required by the conventions of the International Labor Organization, the labor arm of the United Nations.

Union voter rights patrols

The AFL-CIO will be deploying poll monitors in 28 communities in eight states to help prevent the kind of voting rights violations that took place during the 2000 presidential election, the federation announced last week. AFL-CIO unions and constituency groups will be joining with community organizations and local lawyers in Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin to train poll monitors who will be available on Election Day to answer voters’ questions about their rights. They will be backed up by a network of lawyers available to handle problems that require legal action, said Esmeralda Aguilar, a spokesperson for the federation.

‘Domestic goddess’ to host minimum wage event

Actress Roseanne Barr will host a video blog featuring interviews with seven workers describing what life is like at the federal minimum wage, Oct. 23-30, the AFL-CIO announced.

Barr, a member of both the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, as well as ACORN, said she campaigned in Florida in 2004 to increase that state’s minimum hourly wage by $1. The current federal minimum is $5.15, unchanged in 10 years.

A poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 88 percent of the general public approves of minimum-wage hikes, including 72 percent of Republicans.

The AFL-CIO and ACORN are co-sponsoring the event in support of Nov. 7 minimum wage ballot initiatives in six states — Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Ohio. According to the AFL-CIO, the efforts of union members and their allies have already resulted in legislation boosting the minimum wage in 11 states. Access the blog at sevendaysatminimumwage.org and at YouTube.com beginning Oct. 23.

Eight years without a break

A jury in Philadelphia has awarded at least $78 million to 187,000 Wal-Mart workers who have been working unpaid overtime and with no rest breaks since 1998. It’s the third such big overtime pay verdict in the last several months against the retailer. Lead plaintiff Dolores Hummel said she had to work in a Sam’s Club bakery in Reading through breaks and quitting time to meet Wal-Mart’s demands. She averaged 8-12 unpaid hours a month. Her court papers said Wal-Mart enhanced its $10 billion profits through unpaid off-the-clock work.

Three more state federations for single payer

Florida, Wisconsin and West Virginia have brought to 13 the number of state labor federations on record in support of HR 676, Rep. John Conyers’ bill to institute a universal single-payer health care system for the U.S.

Kenneth Perdue, president of the West Virginia state federation, said, “Health care is the most critical problem with our economy and this country, and we believe that it is about time we take control of the issue and drive the discussion.”

HR 676 would cover every person in the U.S. for all necessary medical care, including prescriptions, hospital, outpatient, preventive care, dental, mental, rehab, substance abuse, vision care and long-term care, and would end deductibles and co-payments, according to the All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care – HR 676. For a sample resolution, e-mail nursenpo@aol.com.

This Week in Labor is compiled by Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org). Press Associates Inc. contributed.