People Before Profit blog

For workers, there are no borders, Lessons from Asian American worker struggles

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 05:15:00 +0000

SEATTLE — A traveling exhibit, “Journey for Justice: 223 Years of Asian Pacific American History in the Puget Sound,” opened at the Wing Luke Asian Museum here Sept. 27 with its bold message that Asian Pacific American workers have won victories over racism and exploitation, yet continue to struggle for equality today.

Many of the workers whose photos and biographies are featured in the exhibit were present at the reception. Laurie Yamamura, a Japanese American postal worker, was there with her husband. She served as shop steward of her union local at the University of Washington post office before retiring in 2001. “This exhibit is fascinating,” she told the World. “It is part of my history. Stand up for your rights. That’s the lesson for me. That’s why I joined the union. If you help yourself, then you can help your fellow workers as well.”

Telling untold stories

Tracy Lai, president of the Seattle Chapter of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), told the capacity crowd the exhibit has traveled widely since it was completed in 2004, displayed at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., this summer, and displayed in Vancouver, British Columbia, during the Labor Day weekend. It created such an impression, she said, that the Canadian labor movement “wants to form a Canadian version of APALA.”

Ron Chew, director of the museum, said, “This exhibit … tells stories that have not been told, the struggle for justice. My father was a waiter paid $1 an hour, seven days a week, no vacation. My mother was a sweatshop worker. As a child, I watched people working literally until they died.” He announced that the museum is near to completing its $23 million fund drive for a new, much larger building where this unsung history will be featured.

Peter Kardas, director of the Labor Center at Evergreen College in Olympia, which helped produce the exhibit, said, “It reminds people of the repression and the racism and the anti-immigrant hysteria that has gone on for so long.”

The exhibit consists of photos of Asian American and Pacific Islander trade unionists active in the labor movement today with biographical sketches of their lives and struggles as union activists. The exhibit brings home just how rarely we see working people depicted as heroes in our mass culture, even though not a single wheel would turn without their work and every cupboard would be bare.

‘Make the history’

One of those featured is Tracy Lai, herself, a social studies professor at Seattle Central Community College. Lai is the president of American Federation of Teachers Local 1789 on her campus. “I teach about history,” she told an interviewer, “and one of the things that I emphasize with my students is when people are in those moments of making history, rarely do we know it. ‘Make the history,’ is what I say. Make the history.”

The exhibit provides a timeline called “milestones” that begins in 1780 with the arrival of Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest working as seamen and stevedores for the Hudson Bay Company.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the mass internment of Japanese Americans during World War II are highlighted in the exhibit, which features many archival photographs and drawings.

Another worker pictured in the exhibit is Richard Gurtiza, a Filipino American, director of Region 37 of the Inland Boatmen’s Union in Seattle. An affiliate of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), Region 37 was once known as Local 37, representing the mostly Filipino cannery workers in Alaska and down the Pacific Coast.

“Sometimes even in the labor movement we are not recognized. We are not given a seat at the table,” Gurtiza told the World. “It is important to raise the consciousness of the role of Asian American workers in the labor movement.”

APALA and the exhibit, he said, can serve as a “bridge between the communities and the labor movement.”

Defending immigrants, defending the union

One of the milestones featured in the exhibit is the struggle to defend Local 37 leaders Ernesto Mangaoang and Chris Mensalves, both based in Seattle during a Cold War drive to deport them back to the Philippines in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The timeline makes clear it is revenge for their militant role in defending the cannery workers using their left-wing political beliefs as a pretext.

Among the staunchest defenders of the two union leaders was B.J. Mangaoang, wife of Ernesto. B.J., as she was affectionately known to her friends and family, served for many years as chairperson of the Communist Party USA in Washington state. She died Oct. 20 in Seattle at age 92.

The case, Mangaoang v. Boyd, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1953 that Mangaoang could not be deported under the Walter-McCarran Act.

“That was an era when everybody was being red-baited,” Gurtiza said. “They were trying to break the union. They tried to deport ILWU President Harry Bridges. They were not able to do it because the ILWU wielded such power on the docks.” Both Mangaoang and Bridges were well-known Marxists.

Against ‘race hatred’

The Bush administration is engaged in dragnet raids and mass deportations of immigrant workers today, Gurtiza added. “They are fanning the fires of fear and anxiety. They are using that fear as a means of control. All these immigrant workers want is to work, to get a fair wage so they can support their families.”

The exhibit points out that backward sections of labor joined in anti-immigrant witch-hunts that benefited only the bosses. Many workers, however, “were keen to the ways employers used immigrant and minority laborers to break strikes and weaken the power of organized labor,” the commentary explains.

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and later the ILWU “vigilantly organized Asian workers into their ranks.”

Another milestone cited in the exhibit was the Seattle general strike of 1919. “For five days in February, 65,000 workers participated in a general strike in support of the city’s wartime shipyard workers,” the timeline states. The Seattle IWW issued an “Appeal to Japanese Workers in America.” One “Wobbly” wrote to a newspaper at the time, “Teaching race hatred has been the foundation rock on which the capitalists have been able to induce the workers to sanction and enlist in war. If we would allow every (Japanese worker) in our unions, that would solve the question.” He signed the letter, “Yours for one big union, with nobody that works barred no matter what his or her color, race, or creed.”

During the ensuing general strike, “the Japanese Labor Union formally endorsed and honored the strike” despite the continued exclusionary policies of many unions, the timeline reports.

Art Shields’ memoir, “On the Battle Lines, 1919-1939,” (published by International Publishers, New York) is quoted in the exhibit. Shields, later a staff writer for the Daily Worker, wrote, “The general strike was the first mass demonstration of interracial unity I had seen. The Black migration from the Deep South had not yet reached Seattle. But the Japanese colony went on strike with us. Seattle had 10,000 Japanese immigrants … any restaurants and hotels depended on them. The strike would have been weakened without them.”

Wartime internment

Another milestone is the unjust and shameful mass internment of Japanese Americans after Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942. The timeline records that 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent were “forcibly removed from the Pacific Coast to inland ‘internment camps,’” on the bogus claim that they were “agents of the Japanese Empire.”

The exhibit features a photo of one of those detainees, Karl G. Yoneda, although he, his wife Elaine Black, and their son Tommy, were arrested in California. Yoneda, a leader of the Communist Party USA, was a legendary organizer of Asian American workers and a member of the ILWU.

Yoneda recorded his heroic exploits in his 1983 autobiography, “Ganbatte, Sixty-Year Struggle of a Kibei Worker,” published by the Asian American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. The AFT’s Human Rights and Community Relations Department published a beautiful poster of Karl Yoneda as part of its Asian Pacific American Labor Pioneers series, hailing him as “A champion for world peace and socialism.”

The APALA exhibit cites a major milestone in 1946 when Washington state citizens of Asian, African American and Hispanic ancestry began lobbying for the enactment of a Fair Employment Practices Act. “This is finally achieved in 1949,” the exhibit reads.

Yesterday and today

Today, globalized transnational capital is wreaking havoc in most of the developing world. A vast reserve army of labor, many of them forced from the land by the crisis in agriculture, is desperately seeking jobs to support their families, crossing borders seeking work in a strange land.

The parallels between the repression directed against immigrants today and that heaped upon immigrants 50 or 100 years ago is striking. Invariably, the bosses seek to inflame fear and to split, divide and confuse. Frightened people are easy to manipulate, their minds clouded so that they don’t see their common interest and their need for unity against a common foe.

The Japanese Labor Association summed it up in a letter to the Seattle General Strike Committee in February 1919, declaring that they had joined the strike. The letter deplored the AFL’s exclusion of Asian workers, adding, “If we laborers throughout the world have a similar position against the capitalists, no matter what jobs we occupy and what our nationality is, then there can be no borders for the laborers and we should do our duty in helping to win this fight.”

Tim Wheeler (greenerpastures21212 @yahoo.com) is national political correspondent for the People’s Weekly World.

Union activist: organizing drive spurs contract gains

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 05:01:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — “Our members are thrilled. For the first time in years we pulled off a victory.” Ray Milici, veteran of 40-plus years working at Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH), was reflecting on the significance of the August contract settlement between the hospital and the 150 dietary workers represented by 1199/SEIU.

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Univ. of Chicago workers demand fair contract

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 04:57:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Sharon Mikulich, a clerical worker for the Law School at the University of Chicago, has worked there for 31 years. An active member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 743, she was an original bargainer for the union when it was founded in 1979. She comes from a union family.

On her lunch hour, Mikulich joined dozens of other University of Chicago workers, students and supporters in an Oct. 19 picket line outside the university’s International House.

Inside, university officials and Local 743 have been negotiating a new contract, which Mikulich and supporters say is unfair. So campus student-labor solidarity groups, along with university workers of Local 743, have joined forces to insist the university meets their demands.

The union says the university’s offer of a 3 percent annual wage increase does not keep up with inflation. The workers are demanding 4 percent, which they say would cost the school less than $400,000 a year. This is less than the salary and benefits enjoyed by many university administrators.

“Groceries, gas, and rent have all gone up and 3 percent does not match the cost of living at all,” said Mikulich. Health care costs and premiums are also rising, she added.

Mikulich said job security and step increases in a multi-tier system of workers are also problems on campus.

“Unions are very important to me and young people need to know the importance of a union,” said Mikulich, who expressed appreciation for the student-labor solidarity that this campaign has produced.

“I’d like to see everyone here organized,” she added.

Contract talks started last January, and the workers have now been without a contract for six months. Though past contract negotiations have gone well, this year the university is refusing to accept the workers’ demands.

Joe Sexauer, 29, a leader of Local 743, said the workers voted down the university’s last proposal by 90 percent.

“The demand is money, but it’s really about respect and the cost of living,” said Sexauer. “The contract has been getting worse,” he added. “The university’s offer is really insulting.”

Sexauer said many students, including African American student groups, have been very supportive of the workers. He said putting pressure on the school management is key.

A university employee since 1973, Mary Caraway works in the press, books and journals department. Though not a member of Local 743, she said she was at the picket line to support the workers’ demands.

“You don’t have to be a union member to support the union,” said Caraway. “The university should realize that the union is an ally, not an antagonist, and hard workers deserve respect.”

A larger rally organized by Students Organizing United with Labor is scheduled for Oct. 31.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Labor announced Oct. 22 that Richard Berg and his New Leadership Slate won Local 743’s recent elections. Berg and the New Slate, which will take office next January, beat the incumbent Ford-Galvan Unity Slate. The newly elected officers are expected to take on long-standing problems of corruption in the local.

plozano @pww.org

On the New Orleans docks: Workers fight to rebuild their city

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 04:29:00 +0000

NEW ORLEANS — A small sliver of downtown New Orleans has bounced back as a neighborhood of gleaming corporate office towers and a playground for the rich.

There, on Oct. 19, in the “isle of denial,” as it is called, I met David Magee, 47, an African American who is president of Local 3000 of the International Longshoremen’s Association. He agreed to get me onto the docks to interview workers at the Port of New Orleans, two years after Hurricane Katrina.

We drove where the tourists don’t go — uptown New Orleans, New Orleans East, the 9th Ward, in short, more than 80 percent of the city. Vacant homes, boarded-up stores, empty and crumbling apartment buildings, abandoned gas stations, shuttered libraries and shells of school buildings and playgrounds lined the rubble-strewn streets.

Some buildings had plywood nailed over windows and doors. Others displayed their internal damage through gaping holes. Mountains of crushed appliances, water-soaked carpets, broken wood and shattered glass lay piled on sidewalks and in lots where houses once stood.

Magee stopped his car at the entrance to a trailer park sitting on a city block that had been leveled. “I want you to see where Rudy lives,” he said. Rudy Price is a 40-year worker at the port and a member of Magee’s union local.

While Magee distracted the Blackwater USA guards at the entrance by making small talk, I slipped through an opening in the barbed wire fence to take pictures of Price’s trailer. A 30-day eviction note was taped onto his door. FEMA is closing the trailer park.

Deborah Wood lives in the next trailer with her nephew, a teenager with mental retardation. The boy’s mother and Wood’s other sister were killed during Katrina when they were trapped in rising water at their home six blocks away. Deborah and the boy survived and moved to the trailer park.

“I thank God that we have a place to put our heads,” she said, “but we all got sick here and we all need medical care. I had to get my nephew into a hospital 40 miles away.”

Many people in FEMA trailers have gotten ill because formaldehyde was used in the construction of the mobile homes. Magee’s union has joined in a class action suit on behalf of members and others who have suffered illness as a result of living in the trailers.

Past security and out on the docks, we caught up with Price as he operated a crane that lifted container after container from a huge stack on a ship to the dock. When he saw us, he climbed down from the crane’s cab.

Price, 60, told us that after Katrina struck and the levees broke, he was rescued by boat after spending two days on the roof of his home in East New Orleans. He had stayed behind while his sister, her two daughters and his mother evacuated to the Superdome, where unbeknownst to him they and 30,000 others were enduring living hell with the heat, no power, no water, no food and no toilet facilities.

“Thank the Lord that I found them when I got there and thank Him that they were alive,” he said. “I saw too many dead there.” Price’s mother had become very ill, however, and when they got to Texas, she died. After settling his family in a Houston apartment, Price said, “in two and a half weeks I came back to work here on the docks because I needed the money for my family and because I am a longshoreman — always was and always will be.”

“You couldn’t rebuild New Orleans unless you rebuilt this port,” Price said, “because through our hands here passes all the commerce that makes a country great.”

“All of us who came back lost homes and we had to stay on military or cargo ships. It wasn’t so bad, the sleeping in a bunkroom on a ship. What was really bad was how I missed my family.”

Most of the workers lived on ships well into 2006, Price explained. “After a year I was able to get the FEMA trailer. It is less expensive than an apartment. One-bedrooms here are $1,200, and I have to pay my family’s rent in Texas. I can’t bring them back here just yet because there are no schools or hospitals — a family needs those things. They would have gotten sick if they had to live in one of these trailers.”

As Price talked, I marveled at the courage it must have taken to live through what he had lived through, and then pick up and work to rebuild the port.

“The huge containers were upside down and the tractor-trailers were blown all over the place. There was mud and grease and dangerous chemicals. Every day for nine months, hundreds of us worked with all that and we did it. We cleaned this all up and we got this port open again and it was union labor that did it,” he said proudly.

Asked whether, after all he’s been through, he was angry about his pending eviction from the trailer park, he replied, “Anger’s only good if it gets you to do what you gotta do. I’m gonna fight it like I fought all the other fights, and my union is going to help me.”

jwojcik @pww.org

House GOP upholds Bush veto on SCHIP, union leaders vow retribution

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 06:07:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) — Despite strong lobbying by unions, health care groups, children’s groups and their allies, House Republicans mustered enough votes on Oct. 18 to uphold anti-worker President George Bush’s veto of children’s health care. Union leaders vowed the Republicans would receive retribution at the election polls a year from now.

Additional coverage: PA Radio #45: Ending the Iraq War and the Struggle for the 2008 Elections

RNs strike over patient care

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:26:00 +0000

BERKELEY, Calif. — Nearly 5,000 registered nurses at 15 northern California hospitals walked the picket line Oct. 10-11 in the largest strike of RNs in the state in a decade. Most struck hospitals belong to the Sutter Health chain; two are associated with the Fremont-Rideout Health Group.

The nurses, members of the California Nurses Association (CNA), are demanding that Sutter improve its staffing practices to end unsafe conditions for patients. They object to the chain’s proposals to close facilities or curtail services in San Francisco, Santa Rosa and San Leandro, which they say would especially hurt medically underserved communities. They also oppose Sutter’s efforts to cut nurses’ health benefits and are calling for a better retirement plan.

Joining the nurses on a noontime picket line at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center here Oct. 10 were members of other unions including teamsters, autoworkers, teachers, government employees, professional and technical workers, and the University of California labor coalition.

More nurses, better care

A key demand is that state-mandated staffing levels should be maintained at all times including while nurses have meal and rest breaks, said Jim Ryder, CNA’s director of collective bargaining for Northern California. He said CNA is also calling for each hospital to have a rapid response team including a critical care RN to stabilize patients in emergencies, and for each emergency department to have an admittance RN to speed patient assessments and placements.

Particular outrage has been sparked by a Sutter proposal that RNs should participate in a “wellness” program with coaching by a non-health-care professional. “We think this is an invasion of privacy,” Ryder said, because nurses would be vulnerable to having their health information accessed by insurance companies.

Another example of profit before people

California Labor Federation head Art Pulaski said in a statement that Sutter is “refusing to ensure safe conditions for its patients,” and “has sidestepped its patient-care responsibilities by deciding to close hospitals and reduce services simply so it may increase its bottom line.”

CNA said 95 percent of RNs at the 15 hospitals participated in the strike. The nurses pledged to return to work Oct. 12, though the union said it would consider further labor action if Sutter fails to respond. But several hospitals locked the strikers out for additional days, citing their contracts with strikebreakers.

Sutter, officially a nonprofit entity, announced last spring that its net income jumped by nearly one-third last year and its operating profit increased by 28.1 percent.

mbechtel @pww.org

Up to a third of U.S. jobs are low-wage, researcher says

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:15:00 +0000

Fighting poverty is ‘moral’ issue>

WASHINGTON (PAI) — “One-fourth to one-third” of all U.S. jobs “are low-wage jobs” whose workers need not just a raise, but a support system to help lift them out of poverty, a top researcher says.

Speaking at the latest Economic Policy Institute forum on restructuring the economy, researcher Nancy Cauthen added that “low wage workers don’t have the benefits the rest of the work force has” that would help raise them out of poverty — and keep them out — in future years.

Working hard yet poverty grows

The numbers actually understate the poverty case, Cauthen told the crowd. Some working-poor families get food stamps, child care aid, health insurance and a tax reduction from the federal Earned Income Tax Credit, Cauthen said. Such aid does not lift them out of poverty unless they get all four forms of aid and only 5 percent do.

“We have to make the case that these are not welfare programs, but about building a support system to support low-wage workers,” Cauthen said.

Hurdles instead of bridges

But getting low-income, full-time workers and their families out of poverty still runs up against a wide range of problems, speakers at the seminar said. One is that the families are still forced to go to the equivalent of welfare offices to apply “and many people don’t assume they’re eligible until they’re actually on relief,” Cauthen noted.

Another problem is that as income rises, some of the aid programs are yanked, pushing the families’ income back down.

And a third problem is that the support services are not viewed, as they should be, as providing the low-income families, including the working poor, with “a bridge to the middle class,” speakers added.

A moral issue

Author Barbara Ehrenreich, who captured the problems of the working poor in her book “Nickeled and Dimed in America,” said that lifting people out of poverty should become a moral crusade.

“That’s how the living wage movement has become effective. They said: ‘If you can’t make a living by working, something is wrong here,’” she added.

Not only would making a living wage be a moral crusade that would help people economically, “It would counteract the radical right’s insistence that ‘moral issues’ are gay rights, stem cell research and abortion,” she noted.

Living wages for all

Making living wages to raise people out of poverty a moral crusade would also make it potentially universal, Ehrenreich added. That would expand the universe of supporters beyond the present coalition of unions, low-income advocates and progressives, she pointed out. “And it is very important to make the link between this” — the low income of the working poor — “and the assault on the middle class,” she noted.

“I have middle-class people writing to me after layoffs, downsizing, outsourcing and after a year of being pitched into low-wage jobs,” she added. “This is something that faces everyone. People will lose everything. Health insurance is problem for the middle class, whether you’re employed or unemployed.”

Save home hotline launched

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:09:00 +0000

CLEVELAND — More help is now available to union members caught in the mounting home mortgage crisis, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said at a press conference here Oct. 15.

Sweeney unveiled a free, confidential 24-hour Save My Home Hotline run by the labor organization’s Union Privilege program to counsel and assist members falling behind on mortgage payments or facing foreclosure.

By calling the hotline at 1-866-490-5361, union members and their families can not only receive professional advice, but may also be eligible for interest-free mortgage loan and grant programs run by the AFL-CIO, he said.

Sweeney said he was unveiling the hotline in Cleveland since it is “in the eye of the financial storm involving huge numbers of people who were sold mortgages they don’t understand.”

He also released results of a survey conducted in September by Peter D. Hart Research Associates showing nearly half of homeowners with adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) do not know how their mortgage rates adjust or reset and nearly three-quarters do not know how much their payments will increase when they do.

Mark Seifert, director of the East Side Organizing Project, which helps about 1,600 Clevelanders a year trapped by bad loans, said the situation is worse.

“Based on our numbers, 95 percent of folks didn’t know their rates would adjust up.”

The Hart poll also found majorities favoring government assistance to people with ARMs facing foreclosure and demanding greater regulation of the mortgage industry.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) outlined measures in Congress to fund local counseling programs, protect borrowers from unscrupulous mortgage brokers, strengthen regulation through the Federal Reserve, provide tax relief for borrowers and change in bankruptcy laws.

Unfortunately, he said, President Bush has threatened to veto some of this legislation.

“The people want the government to help out,” Sweeney said, “but the Bush administration has catered to mortgage lenders and brokers.

“Sen. Brown is leading the charge in Washington, but we can’t afford to wait.”

Bulgarian teachers strike for wage hike

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 05:49:00 +0000

Bulgarian teachers began a nationwide strike late last month, calling for higher wages and increased spending on education.

With an average salary of $320 a month, Bulgarian educators are among the lowest paid in Europe. Many are forced to take second or even third jobs in order to maintain a modest standard of living — an increasingly difficult task as prices of basic staples rise sharply in the wake of Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union.

As many as 70 percent of Bulgarian schools are participating in the strike, amid threats by the Ministry of Education to deduct time from the approaching winter and summer vacations.

In addition to demanding the allocation of a minimum 5 percent of national GDP toward education spending, Bulgaria’s 110,000 striking educators (roughly 91 percent of staff of the national education system, according to teachers’ unions) are calling for a 100 percent pay increase, to be implemented incrementally by mid-2008. The Ministry of Education, meanwhile, has offered only a 30 percent increase, claiming additional funds are unavailable. The government has also claimed that earmarking additional money for teachers’ salaries from state reserves would trigger inflation, in addition to layoffs. These projections have been vigorously challenged by unions.

Minister of Education Daniel Velchev has refused to accede to union demands, and has garnered renewed criticism after the publication of a secretly recorded conversation with Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski during negotiations earlier this month. The recorded dialogue reveals the two plotting ways in which to maneuver around the protestors so as to prevent an agreement. Teachers are demanding Velchev’s immediate resignation.

Amid the deadlock in negotiations, rallies, marches and prayer meetings have been organized around the country, with the largest taking place in the capital, Sofia. On Oct. 2, thousands of local teachers and union activists converged upon Sofia Independence Square, chanting “strike” and “resignation,” while demanding a clear blueprint for modernizing Bulgaria’s crumbling educational system. Teachers’ unions said 75,000 teachers filled the streets of downtown Sofia Oct. 11 as they reiterated their demands for higher wages and more government spending on education.

Germans grapple with train strike, jobless pay

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 05:47:00 +0000

BERLIN — Among the issues grabbing the headlines in Germany these days are a big train strike and Social Democratic Party infighting over jobless insurance.

On Oct. 12, suburban and municipal railway workers in the big German cities went out on a one-day strike against Deutsche Bahn, the railway company, upsetting much of the economy. The primary issue is pay.

Most people seem to agree that the locomotive engineers are miserably underpaid, especially in view of their great responsibility. Their union, the GDL, which represents 80 percent of the country’s 20,000 train drivers, has demanded a 31 percent wage hike.

But some time ago the train drivers’ union split off from the main railroad union, Transnet, because its claimed its members were not getting fair attention. Transnet, which along with another railway union represents 120,000 workers, was opposed to the split, naturally. Now the railroad administration is trying to pit one union against the other.

One complication is that the railroads, which transport about 5 million passengers a day, are still nationally owned. The management, however, with the approval of the minister of transportation, a Social Democrat, wants to privatize half of the railways, or at least the rolling stock (locomotives and rail cars), taking its ownership to the stock market like any private company.

Many provincial governments opposing this new step, which they see as leading further along the muddy road to privatization. They fear that smaller, less profitable lines will increasingly be closed down in favor of fast, fancy intercity lines. Many progressives are also opposed. The new Left Party opposes all further privatization of public enterprises, recalling how both customers and the diminishing staff of the telephone and postal service have suffered since they were privatized.

But there is another complication: heading both the GDL and the Transnet unions are conservative union leaders who have been fooled, corrupted or bribed in favor of privatization.

Despite the confusion, progressives generally support the workers’ fight for a wage increase.

On Oct. 15 the GDL rejected Deutsche Bahn’s latest offer, and it may stage another short strike to press its demands. The courts have banned longer strikes.

The second issue in the headlines is the so-called reform package pushed through by the former coalition government of Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats and the Greens, with the approval of all other parliamentary parties except the Left Party.

The government ruled that after one year, unemployed workers lose relatively generous insurance payments and are reduced to the dole, i.e. welfare status. The jobless must list all property of any kind, from jewelry and a car to insurance policies and an apartment. To the extent that such property exceeds a certain level, the dole money is reduced or denied, even if that requires changing apartments. This can mean giving up all that people worked and saved for during a lifetime.

Since proper jobs for those over 40 years of age are rare, this means taking almost any job at any miserable wage, as low as one euro an hour, or face a cutoff from all aid. This has already cost a high price in misery.

But with a growing new Left Party gaining strength not only in eastern but in western Germany — current polls give it 13 percent nationwide — the Social Democrats, in panic at their losses of members and voters, have suddenly rediscovered their social conscience. The party head, Kurt Beck, now calls for “some alterations” in the so-called reform program, like extending the year of compensation for jobless workers over 50 to one and a half or two years.

But Franz Muentefering, the Social Democratic deputy chancellor and labor minister, refuses to go along, partly for fear of a collapse of the coalition with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, which might mean an early new election with disastrous results for the Social Democrats. A party congress will soon try to iron out differences and escape this quandary.

Unions, rights groups praise no-match ruling

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 05:07:00 +0000

Unions and immigrant rights organizations praised a federal judge’s Oct. 10 decision barring the Social Security Administration from using “no-match” letters to force employers to fire workers who cannot quickly clear up discrepancies. At the same time, the groups said, much work lies ahead to achieve fair immigration policies.

Federal District Judge Charles R. Breyer ruled on a challenge to the Bush administration’s proposal to send no-match letters containing a new rule on firing such workers. He said the plan “will, under the mandated time line, result in the termination of employment to lawfully employed workers” and would bring “irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers.”

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, in a statement, called the decision “a significant step towards overturning this unlawful rule, which would give employers an even stronger way to keep workers from freely forming unions.”

The executive vice president of the Service Employees union, Eliseo Medina, said the federal court has seen the no-match regulations “for what they are — an illegal, ill-conceived measure that would threaten thousands of innocent workers and lead to discrimination and massive workforce disruptions.”

“It’s time to stop the indiscriminate roundups and get back to finding solutions that strengthen — rather than divide — our nation,” Medina added.

In August, the Department of Homeland Security announced a new rule that would give employers 90 days to resolve a discrepancy, and a further three days for a worker to submit a new Social Security number. After that, an employer who did not fire the worker would be liable to criminal prosecution or fines.

The American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrant Rights Project, the AFL-CIO, the Alameda County and San Francisco labor councils and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) filed suit to block implementation, and were granted a temporary restraining order. Judge Breyer’s Oct. 10 preliminary injunction bars the rule from taking effect pending a trial, expected to be some months in the future.

While the new regulation would hurt both native-born and immigrant workers, those “most harmed by this extreme proposal would have been immigrant workers, documented and undocumented alike,” said Sharon Cornu, head of the Alameda County Central Labor Council. “American labor law fails to protect them, their freedom to choose a union and the right to bargain collectively,” she added.

Cornu said the labor council will continue working with community organizations, the faith community and elected officials to inform people about their rights and educate them on the real issues behind immigration reform.

Monica Guizar, employment policy attorney with the NILC, said, “Overall, we’re pleased that the judge agreed with us that the government’s proposal would affect more than 8 million workers, including lawfully employed workers,” many of whom would lose their jobs.

The Social Security Administration acknowledges that its database contains 17 million records with discrepancies, and that 70 percent of the mismatches involve U.S. citizens, Guizar noted.

“Our goal is to educate the public and employers, and have them realize that what DHS [Homeland Security] is proposing is not an effective immigration enforcement tool and will negatively impact all workers and employers as well,” she said. A staff attorney with the San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus, Shirin Sinnar, said

Judge Breyer’s ruling is “very significant” and “hopefully will deter many employers from unnecessarily firing immigrant workers.”

“At the same time,” she cautioned, “it is important to remember that other government programs are currently under way to enforce immigration rules.”

It is important to continue “to send a message, through community action, media advocacy and political pressure, that one-sided workplace enforcement without comprehensive immigration reform is not an answer,” Sinnar said. “That message needs to continue to get out, because it’s not just the no-match letters, it’s so much else the government is doing that’s problematic.”

Though currently no-match letters are not grounds to terminate workers, employers have repeatedly misused them to get rid of workers who seek to organize or to stand up for their rights. An example is the firing earlier this year of 12 immigrant workers at the Woodfin Suite Hotel in Emeryville, Calif., who joined others in asserting their right to a living wage and other protections under a city ordinance.

mbechtel @pww.org

U.S. govt, bosses use racial profiling

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 06:06:00 +0000

Fernando Rodriquez, director of Local 7 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union in Colorado, took time out from the Congreso Latino meeting in Los Angeles last week (see story, page 3) to tell the World about immigration raids the government conducted at Swift & Co. meatpacking plants in December.

During those raids, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents rounded up 12,000 workers at plants throughout the Midwest and West, including one in Greeley, Colo.

The UFCW has filed suit against both the ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, alleging that the workers had their constitutional rights violated as a result of false imprisonment and abuse suffered at the hands of the government.

Following are excerpts from Fernando Rodriquez’s comments.

“ICE arrived in Greeley around 6 a.m. on Dec. 12. They surrounded the packing house, fully armed, and took over the plant. The guards were stationed 5 feet apart with guns and riot gear.

“I was in Denver at a staff meeting. As soon as we heard, I rushed back and arrived at the packinghouse in Greeley at 11 a.m. I found all the Mexican and Latino workers in the cafeteria. There were 1,200 workers, wall to wall. They were not being permitted to go to the restroom, use the phone, eat or retrieve their lunch pails.

“The ICE agents said they only wanted to check their status. They came in with 29 warrants for ID theft. Instead of calling out the 29, they herded all the Latino workers down one stairwell into the cafeteria. Then they separated the citizens and the noncitizens. It was all racial profiling.

“When I arrived, my members told me they weren’t allowed to eat or use the restroom. I asked the agents why and they said they would take care of it. They started letting only one or two people go to the bathroom at a time, after four hours of waiting.

“As I was talking to the membership, an ICE agent asked me who I was. I explained that I am the director of UFCW representing that membership. They said I could not be there because I am a U.S. citizen. I asked why the supervisors were allowed to be there, since they are U.S. citizens. They said that the company had invited them, and told me that if I did not leave I would be arrested.

“I left and went to the production floor and found 200 to 300 workers there. They had not been allowed to eat or use the bathroom. When I asked that their legal right to talk to an attorney be granted, I was told it was none of my business.

“The workers were taken to Denver, to Texas and some were shipped back to Mexico. It was a long-term project to locate each individual.

“That same day ICE raided all the Swift plants in the country. [As a result of legal challenges by UFWC locals, some workers were released and] only nine of the 29 warrants at Greeley were upheld.

“The labor movement represents everybody who wants to be organized. After they are hired by the company and complete their probation, they become members and gain representation no matter where they are from.

“ICE targeted the Mexican and Latino workers. Bush is using racial profiling to try and keep a Republican presidency and win more Republican seats in Congress.

“Our government has allowed this. The 13 million undocumented in our country should be given amnesty.

“Everybody in this country has the right to legal protections. These rights were not given to the people who were detained. The lawsuit we have filed is to prevent the violation of human rights.”

joelle.fishman @pobox.com

Auto pact: the good, the bad and the ugly

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 05:32:00 +0000

The wages and working conditions of union autoworkers have always set standards for all manufacturing. These in turn have put upward pressure on wages and benefits for all workers. But in today’s political and economic climate, major contract negotiations in the manufacturing sector are hell. Thirty years of corporate/right-wing attacks on labor law and workers’ rights have taken an enormous toll. Capitalist globalization, with its frenzied export of capital and jobs, has greatly weakened union leverage.

In 1979 General Motors employed over 400,000 autoworkers in the U.S.; today that number is less than 80,000 and shrinking. U.S. autoworkers’ productivity is higher here than anywhere else in the world. Labor costs are about 10 percent of the cost of a vehicle. About 25 percent of U.S. autoworkers are in unions. Thirty years ago, labor costs were about 25 percent of the cost of a vehicle, and 90 percent of assembly workers were union.

Add in the environment of corporate greed, fraud, flimflam and corruption evidenced on Wall Street in the current mortgage and financial crisis, and you have essential context for evaluating the GM/United Auto Workers settlement.

The good

When over 73,000 UAW workers walked out last month in the first national strike against General Motors in over 30 years, they showed courage, militancy and spirit. Within minutes, spontaneous solidarity erupted across a broad section of labor and the working class. The Teamsters stopped moving parts, and that led to quickly closing plants in Canada and Mexico. Caravans of supporters, other unions and just folks showed up on picket lines bearing refreshments and support. The AFL-CIO, Change to Win and major unions responded with pledges of support. This was not just trade union solidarity. Everyone in labor, and many beyond, knew that the GM workers were on the front line for us all, and were ready to back them up.

The mostly bad

The GM contract is a setback for autoworkers and for the entire U.S. working class. Its worst feature is a two-tier employment system that will mean new hires will get about half the wages of senior workers, and worse benefits. With huge cash buyouts of current workers and the expected retirement of about a third of current workers in the next five years, the second tier could become the main tier by the end of the contract. This is a real sharp setback for younger workers who will soon be the majority. What kids will want to follow their parents into auto for half the wages and fewer benefits?

The disunity and the unfairness of it all has great potential to weaken the union even further, especially on the shop floor. Further, union auto jobs have been an important path out of poverty for African American, Latino and women workers in particular. A two-tier system will greatly undermine this kind of opportunity.

The health care part of the agreement also has great dangers. It shifts responsibility off of GM and onto the union. This sets the workers up for crisis. Recession, stock market crashes and rising costs can leave the workers with greatly increased costs or totally uninsured. Not to mention the problems of the union being a “player” on Wall Street — talk about conflicts of interest! Letting this giant international corporation renege on its health care responsibilities will certainly lead both union and nonunion companies along the same path.

These kinds of concessions from the union will make it hard to organize new members.

The UAW leadership has underestimated the union’s strength and its members’ readiness for a fight. At the same time it has overestimated GM’s real vulnerabilities. The U.S. auto market is still essential to GM. Unfortunately, this agreement follows a long-established pattern of assuming that it is better to “go along to get along.” For the last 25 years, concession contracts have claimed to provide job security. But as soon as the job “guarantee” is signed, GM and the other auto companies start whittling away for the next contract. Keeping promises to workers is not part of their creed. As UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said, the workers can’t give enough and the company can’t take enough.

The race to the bottom never stops, so autoworkers need to get off that bus. Keeping GM “competitive” is just yada-yada for “keep GM profits up and let the workers bear the costs.” Stopping this GM drive requires the power of the membership. That has to be prepared and mobilized. It requires reaching out to all of labor and the working class, not pursuing a go-it-alone strategy.

It should be clear to all that the failed strategy and tactics of struggle in the auto industry of the last 30 years will not work today. New strategy and tactics have to be based on the very new conditions of a globalized auto industry. They also have to be based on the reality that so much of the U.S. auto industry is unorganized. The power of a union is its members and its numbers. And increasingly, that power is in global labor alliances that can match global giants like GM. Labor’s power is not measured only by the wisdom and determination of its leaders, but real leadership wisdom and determination is required to win in this new world.

A good idea

By all accounts it was GM’s resistance to the union’s demand that it invest in U.S. plants to guarantee jobs that forced the strike. Trying to force GM to commit to and expand its domestic operations opens an important front of struggle. GM’s capital comes from the hard work of generations of autoworkers. The workers very much need to challenge GM’s “right” to invest where it pleases with no responsibility to the people and communities who made all that capital. Unfortunately, the contract gives GM a loophole, saying “market-related volume decline” will guide plant closings and U.S. investment. Hopefully the contract will keep jobs and investments here, but GM should not be allowed to make those decisions alone.

The ugly

Wall Street’s clamor for autoworkers’ blood was truly ugly. It went the gamut from praising GM for finally (sic) getting tough with the union to the mad rant by MSNBC’s Jim Cramer for GM to “break the union.” After the tentative agreement was announced, Wall Street started yammering that the concessions weren’t enough. The ugly, naked hatred of these finance capital pundits is scary to behold. Gone is the pretense of wanting class partnership. Gone is any pretense of fairness or justice.

The struggle continues

This fight isn’t over by a long shot. Ford and Chrysler contracts are still pending and could result in more picket lines. Labor and all progressive movements have to continue to build support for this fight. Even at GM, where it seems certain that the contract will be ratified, the fight will continue.

But ultimately, those of us who understand the broader working class nature of this fight have to redouble our political efforts on issues central to these negotiations. The 2006 election victories against the right-wing Republicans, the energy of the autoworkers in their strike and the determination of labor and progressives to shift power even more in the 2008 elections — these are exciting indications that what autoworkers have lost at the bargaining table can be won in the political arena.

Every candidate for Congress and the presidency needs to be pushed to take a stand on single-payer national health care, on passing the Employee Free Choice Act (there is leverage in having Mercedes, Toyota, BMW, and Honda workers in the UAW) and on industrial policy that mandates re-investment in the manufacturing base of our economy. The autoworkers’ fight is our fight! They have to win so we can win.

Scott Marshall (scott @rednet.org) is chair of the Communist Party USA’s labor commission. See the labor commission’s new blog at http://laborupfront.blogspot.com

Autoworkers: Round 2

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 05:03:00 +0000

Chrysler, UAW agree on tentative pact

DETROIT — About 43,000 autoworkers streamed out of their workplaces Oct. 10 at Chrysler plants across the nation, launching a second nationwide auto strike within a two-week period, but this one lasting only about four hours. Members of the United Auto Workers union shut down plants and were on picket lines just minutes after the 11 a.m. strike deadline. But by around 4 p.m., a tentative settlement with the company was announced.

About an hour after the workers shut down Chrysler’s plants, the union’s bargaining team was meeting with company representatives, hammering out last-minute details. The company is reported to have put up strong resistance to union demands for job security guarantees and adequate health care funding.

For the second time in two weeks, autoworkers across the country flexed their muscle and showed their willingness to fight. The first time around the strike was against General Motors.

“This is not just a fight against Chrysler,” a worker picketing the Sterling Heights Assembly plant outside Detroit, told the World. “We are out here for everyone in this country who opposes sending manufacturing jobs overseas, and we are out here fighting for all working people.”

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters immediately honored the picket lines at Chrysler, ending for half a day the company’s ability to move everything from finished cars to automotive parts in or out of its plants.

When the Teamsters backed the GM strikers two weeks ago, the union’s president, James Hoffa, said, “This is a fight against corporate America’s attack on the workers.”

There were reports that Chrysler was trying to squeeze the union for more concessions than GM got two weeks earlier. Workers at GM ratified that agreement on Oct. 10, with about 60 percent giving their approval.

The union normally settles with one U.S. automaker and uses the deal as a pattern for an agreement with the other two. It was difficult for the union to do it this way because Chrysler pushed hard for more concessions.

In 2005, Chrysler did not get health care givebacks worth $340 million that GM and Ford got. The company wanted that money this time around.

The company and the union were apart, before the agreement, on setting up a Chrysler-funded, union-run trust that would take on $18 billion in retiree health costs. Chrysler’s new owner, Cerberus Capital, a private equity firm, wasn’t anxious to put much cash into a trust fund because equity firms suck up a lot of money quickly and then sell what remains. They are often only short-term owners.

Chrysler is resisting union demands for job security for the same reason, but also because it has announced plans to cut out various models. As a bargaining chip, Chrysler temporarily shut six production plants Oct. 3, just as negotiations were heating up. The shutdowns will last one to two weeks.

The several hour strike against Chrysler was the first major confrontation between organized labor and one of these private equity firms.

Before the strike Chrysler also hinted that it would cut even more than the 2,000 workers it said, last February, that it intends to lay off.

The union bargaining team, meanwhile, had indicated that it was resisting a two-tier wage system like the one the union accepted at GM.

The union may have had more leverage with Chrysler than it did with GM. Chrysler, unlike GM, couldn’t lean on profits from a huge international sales operation, and a longer strike at Chrysler would have caused almost immediate damage to the launch of the company’s critically important new minivans. Chrysler has redesigned the 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan and Chrysler Town and Country minivans for launch this fall, and they are among the company’s most profitable vehicles.

Although 60 percent of GM’s workers voted for their agreement, Chrysler and Ford workers may not necessarily rush to approve concessions. When 61 percent of GM workers backed the contract negotiated four years ago, Chrysler and Ford workers were much less supportive, backing it by margins just above 50 percent.

Workers at many GM plants, including plants in Missouri and New York and the Romulus engine plant in Michigan, actually rejected the tentative pact.

Workers who backed the recent deal with GM cited promises to continue production at 55 of the 82 UAW plants and the harsh economic climate as the main reasons for their support.

The two-tier wage system and GM’s shifting its health care responsibility onto the union were the hardest concessions to swallow.

Al Benchich, president of UAW Local 909 at a GM power-train plant in Warren, Mich., said globalization makes the union’s job more difficult, but that the problems with two-tier and health care were so great that he would “rather go down fighting the good fight.”

“The only power we have,” he said, “is to withhold our labor. … We may have to go back to the 1930s and man the barricades” or go back to the civil rights movement and “get out in the streets to make the changes necessary.”

Benchich said the two-day strike against GM provided a glimpse of what kinds of change may come. He described a temporary worker who was so impressed by how workers could shut down a huge company in a matter of minutes that he came in eight hours early to work on the strike, plastered signs on his truck and drove up and down all day in front of the plant.

jrummel @pww.org

John Wojcik contributed to this story.

Judge halts no-match letters

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 04:14:00 +0000

On immigrant issue, unions win again in court battle vs. Bush

By Mark Gruenberg

SAN FRANCISCO (PAI) — Unions, led by the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees, and joined by allies ranging from the ACLU to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, won another round Oct. 10 in their battle with the Bush administration over immigration. A federal judge banned Bush from using error-ridden Social Security records to round up and deport workers and prosecute companies.

San Francisco Federal District Judge Charles R. Breyer said Bush’s Department of Homeland Security cannot punish employers who refuse to act after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) tells them about workers whose employment identification does not match their Social Security records.

Bush wants DHS to use Social Security’s “no-match” letters to employers to force firms to fire the workers unless they can prove, within 93 days, that they are documented. If they fail to provide such proof, DHS would conclude the companies have “constructive knowledge” that the workers are not in the country legally and prosecute the firms while it deports the workers. Breyer stopped the whole program until he can rule after a full-scale trial.

“The government’s proposal to disseminate no-match letters affecting more than 8 million workers will, under the mandated timeline, result in the termination of lawfully employed workers,” Breyer wrote. “If allowed to proceed, the mailing of no-match letters, accompanied by DHS’s guidance letter, would result in irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers.”

Unions that launched the suit hailed the ruling. AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney called Breyer’s order to halt the “no-match” program “a significant step towards overturning this unlawful rule, which would give employers an even stronger way to keep workers from freely forming unions.”

“More than 70 percent of Social Security Administration discrepancies refer to U.S. citizens,” Sweeney pointed out.

The unions showed in their court papers the no-match letters were riddled with errors — everything from misspelled names to the wrong marital status for workers.

Service Employees Vice President Eliseo Medina said, “The court’s unequivocal decision to stop the ‘no-match’ madness is a victory for all workers and all well-meaning employers. The court has seen the administration’s Social Security no-match regulations for what they are: An illegal, ill-conceived measure that would threaten thousands of innocent workers and lead to discrimination and massive workforce disruptions.

“Today’s decision sends a clear message that punitive crackdowns that attempt to sidestep the law will not be tolerated,” Medina added.

The ACLU explained that until the Bush regime’s recent actions, in response to pressure from its own constituents, the no-match letters “were never considered reason to believe” a worker was here illegally. As a result, employers did not have to act. Bush schemed to change that.

“The judge saw the need to fully examine the wisdom of placing employees’ jobs in jeopardy because of the mess in our Social Security database, which is rife with errors,” said lead attorney Scott Kronland. Bush “showed a callous disregard for legal workers and citizens by adopting a rule that punishes innocent workers and employers under the guise of so-called ‘immigration enforcement.’”

Rather than punishing citizens and legal workers, the Bush government “should dedicate itself to enforcing the workplace wage and safety rights of all workers,” said Lucas Guttentag, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and another lawyer in the case. The Bush administration had no immediate comment.

Report shows worldwide war on labor

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:41:00 +0000

In Guatemala, masked men shot and killed Marco Tulio Ramirez on Sept. 23 outside his home. Ramirez was secretary of culture and sports for the Guatemalan Banana Workers Union. Soldiers had ransacked the union’s headquarters in July, searching for members’ names.

The hazard of violent death that faces trade unionists, especially in Latin America, is apparent from the recently issued annual report of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) for 2006. A perusal of the report makes for grim reading, especially because improvements from the year before seem nonexistent, a situation that continues this year.

In 2006, there were 144 union activists killed worldwide a 25 percent increase over 2005 — and some 800 beaten or tortured, 5,000 arrested and more than 8,000 fired, including some fired in the U.S. The ITUC report cites 484 activists newly jailed for union work.

The ITUC, the world’s largest trade union federation, represents 305 affiliated unions and 168 million workers from 153 countries.

For murder, the spotlight falls on Colombia, where 76 unionists were killed last year, only two short of the yearly total for all the Americas.

Killers in the Philippines assassinated 33 union members or supporters, often in collusion with government and military officials. Accusations of communist associations or “treasonous intent” are said to have set the stage for many killings there.

What Colombia and the Philippines have in common are strong U.S. alliances and U.S. troops or military contractors on the ground.

The report characterized Colombia’s recent experience as catastrophic. A total of 1,165 union activists are known to have been killed over the past two decades, mostly by right-wing paramilitary units, often at the behest of the national intelligence service and with army cooperation.

Analysts say that the actual number of murders in Colombia is well over 2,500. Only 56 of the accused have gone to trial, with 10 convictions. Testimony from detained paramilitaries and trials of office-holding defendants have documented pervasive government-paramilitary ties aimed in part at union repression.

Asia follows suit, especially India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, where the tactics of choice are dismissal of union activists and arrest — 5,000 and 2,800 respectively — in 2006. Killings and beatings occurred in India, Nepal, Cambodia and Bangladesh. Mass dismissals are a common pattern in Africa, epitomized by the firing of 1,000 flower workers in Kenya.

Exploitation of women is a worldwide theme, especially in the “export processing zones” of Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, and in Asia, including Pakistan, the Philippines, India and Indonesia. Work in these zones is marked by intimidation, long hours, low pay, union repression, and, occasionally, mass dismissals.

Women domestic workers are also victimized worldwide, with women in the Gulf nations of the Middle East bearing a special burden.

The ITUC report takes special note of Australia, where a new Industrial Relations Act put in place by the right-wing John Howard government set the stage for heavy fines against union leaders, arbitrary firings and union repression.

Conspicuously absent from the world summary are references to unions in Haiti and Russia, where workers are grappling with poverty, weakened unions and, especially in Russia, capitalist excesses.

In the report, Guy Ryder, general secretary of the ITUC, says, “International solidarity action by trade unions around the world has brought much-needed support to workers whose fundamental rights are being violated,” adding, “Global trade union pressure on governments and companies has brought results.”

atwhit @megalink.net

Joining the middle class in 2007

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:11:00 +0000

The United Food and Commercial Workers union, negotiating for thousands of grocery workers in Southern California, won a stunning victory in July, approving a new union contract that reversed the unfair two-tiered system they had been forced to accept back in 2004. Now, there’s “only” a six-month waiting period before workers and their families qualify for health coverage. And they received a relatively decent wage increase. No doubt the commitment that thousands of ordinary consumers made to honor picket lines, if a strike happened, helped lubricate the negotiations.

One longtime Ralphs supermarket worker was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying, “Hopefully this will encourage people to join our profession in what is now a middle-class job again.” Other commentators, from the L.A. County Federation of Labor, from Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice and from elsewhere, also emphasized that grocery workers now have “quality jobs” that are “critical to the future of our region’s middle class.”

Sociologists in the United States have used the term “middle class” to define almost everyone in America. It’s a not very subtle way of emphasizing the “classless” nature of American society. Oh, yes, some may have three homes and a yacht, while others struggle to choose between the rent and their pills, but we are all “middle class.” Lower than middle class would be the unemployed, the homeless, welfare recipients, the incarcerated, the truly down and out — but as soon as you get a job, even at minimum wage, presto! — you are back in the comfortable “middle class.” Just make sure you don’t get fired for trying to organize a union, and at all costs avoid a family health catastrophe!

Such terminology is not helpful to us who are trying to make sense of America today, and to make us a stronger, better educated, healthier, and more egalitarian, democratic country. By embracing the term “working class,” that Ralphs worker would make clear that his place in America is alongside every autoworker, every hotel worker, every nurse, every farm worker, and every teacher, and that collectively they have a class interest as opposed to (and most viciously opposed by!) their corporate bosses.

More than that, it is just possible that workers in America might see that their class interests are best served in alliance with workers of other countries too, in this increasingly globalized economy, where industry follows cheap labor in the “race to the bottom” that characterizes our age.

If I protest against “middle class” blurring of social distinctions, I also say this: When we refer to the working class, let us not exempt its lower strata, the down and out, unemployed, welfare clients and homeless, who are always dangled before our eyes as examples of what will happen if we don’t go along with industry’s demands.

The most important issue facing that Ralphs worker is neither her/his raise, nor the waiting period for health care. The main issue is consciousness — to begin thinking not like a member of the “middle class” but of the working class — and to start demanding what working people in every other nation already have or are struggling for themselves: vacations, universal health care, great schools, adequate housing, good public transportation systems, workplace safety and protection of the environment, etc.

There is no shame in being a worker, no need to disappear behind a “middle class” curtain. Let us turn our victories into real power through every means at our disposal — the ballot, petition, demonstration, organizing more people into unions, and the strike if necessary. As Ralph Chaplin, our beloved old Wobbly poet, put it in “Solidarity Forever”:

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold, Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold. We can bring birth to the new world from the ashes of the old. For the Union makes us strong.

Eric Gordon has written a biography of composer Marc Blitzstein and co-authored the autobiography of composer Earl Robinson.

Mad Moneys anti-union tantrum makes me mad

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:02:00 +0000

The end of the historic strike against General Motors by the nation’s autoworkers may well signal the beginning of a fight by all workers against a new level of the corporate offensive against our jobs, our wages, our benefits and our very livelihoods.

During the strike, greedy Wall Street fat cats peddled their offensive in the press and on television, and they did it with a sharper-than-ever class edge. It’s no surprise because the autoworkers who went on strike walked those picket lines to defend not just their own standard of living, but to fight also for the interests of all the rest of us.

The ultra-right, multinational corporate take on the strike was perhaps best expressed by CNBC Mad Money host James Cramer, who said, essentially, there’s no reason to build cars in America, and General Motors won’t be around much longer if they don’t “break” the United Auto Workers union.

In his usual hyped-on-steroids style, with saliva almost dripping from his mouth, he dubbed the strike an opportunity to end union representation at GM. He said the only way to “save” American manufacturing jobs is to break the UAW.

There will be a lot of discussion in the weeks ahead about the specifics of the new contract negotiated by the union and GM. The union leadership will characterize it as a victory or the best they could get. Some will see it as a total sellout of the workers. Many will have opinions in between those two.

Many will vote for it because they see it as at least “holding the line” in some respects, or because they feel it was the best they could get in terms of protecting pensions and retiree benefits, or because they hope that GM will live up to promises it has made to invest in U.S. plants, or even because they need the lump-sum bonuses.

The purpose of this piece is not to analyze the contract, but to say to Cramer and his crowd that the strike proves workers will not roll over and play dead as Wall Street writes and tries to administer the prescriptions he pushed on his TV talk show. They will not lie down while Wall Street smashes their unions.

Seventy-three thousand workers went on strike and lost two days pay to fight against Cramer’s prescription, to fight for their wages, to fight for their pensions and health care, to fight for keeping jobs in America and to insist that the company keep the promises it has made.

Cramer showed that, at best, he is unable, or at worst, unwilling to understand this. He is unable or unwilling to see that we all have a stake in what the autoworkers are fighting for. The task for a responsible talk show host is to show the entire country how we can best root for the autoworkers because they are our “home team.” To suggest that they should be “broken” or “smashed” is an obscenity.

Watching Cramer rant and rave made me angry but also very sad.

Chris Matthews asked Cramer what it would be like years down the road if there is no auto industry in America.

Cramer said: “If you don’t break the UAW, we won’t have an industry. There’s no reason to make cars here. If GM wins and they bust this union, I’m telling you you’re going to have a five-fold increase in this stock and, in the end, this is America — and that’s what we are all about.”

Reflecting on this, the only thought that comes to my head is: Thank you, autoworkers! Your fight is our fight!

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

EDITORIAL: Sexual harassment hurts all

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 08:52:00 +0000

Every day women go to work and have to face various kinds of gender discrimination — an unfair wage differential, discrimination in health and other benefits, lack of advancement opportunities, and sexual harassment.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade sex discrimination. However, sexual harassment did not become widely recognized or prosecuted as a form of sex discrimination until the mid-1970s, when women were entering the workforce in greater numbers.

Recently, New York Knicks coach Isaiah Thomas and his employer, Madison Square Garden, were found guilty of sexually harassing Anucha Browne Sanders, a former Knicks marketing executive. Sanders, a former women’s college basketball star, was fired after she accused Thomas of making unwanted sexual advances and verbal insults.

Sanders called the ruling a victory for working women everywhere. “If you have a sister, a mother, a daughter or wife who goes to work each day, and if you are a man, you should be outraged” by sexual harassment, she said. “There are many women out there who I have spoken for that don’t have the wherewithal to fight.”

“What I did here, I did for every working woman in America,” Sanders said.

Actually, she did it for working men as well as women.

Both men and women benefit when they are equal partners in all aspects of life, at work, at home and throughout our society.

When women are paid less, or get less benefits, or are forced into part-time or temp jobs, it means fatter profits for the boss, and weakens the struggles of all workers to improve their lives. Only the boss benefits when men and women are divided. It is in the interests of every man that women be viewed as equal partners in all aspects of life, either at work or at home.

Any action that demeans women or makes them feel uncomfortable doing their job is an action that damages men. In the workplace and in society as a whole, sexual harassment helps the boss and the capitalist system. It’s called super-exploitation, and divide and rule. Both men and women should redouble their efforts to stamp out sexual harassment.

Talks continue after first-ever security workers strike

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 08:38:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO — Talks for a new contract continued this week after workers who provide security in prime downtown office buildings returned to their jobs Sept. 27 following a first-ever three-day strike.

Workers, members of SEIU Local 24/7, and their supporters held a spirited late afternoon rally on Market Street Sept. 27 before marching past many of the buildings they protect.

The workers were joined by area elected officials and members of many other unions.

State Sen. Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) told the security officers, “You deserve the respect and compensation commensurate with your job.

“Every labor movement started by taking to the streets in well-focused, determined actions,” she added. “You are showing the city and the world that your time has come, and we stand by you.”

Tim Paulson, head of the San Francisco Labor Council, which backed the strike, said the workers are fighting “a pioneering battle not only here but across the country.” He pledged the council’s continuing full support.

“We didn’t think we’d win Justice for Janitors, but we did,” said state Controller John Chiang. “Someday in the near future we will celebrate your victory, too!”

The union said strikers at over 20 office buildings decided to return to work as a gesture of good faith in view of progress being made in the talks.

As some 4,000 Bay Area building security workers in San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa counties approach their 100th day of working without a contract, wages and health care top their list of demands. Though the properties they protect include buildings owned by real estate giants like Morgan Stanley and Shorenstein, the security officers typically are paid less than $24,000 a year, $5 an hour less than janitors working in the same buildings. They also lack affordable health care.

A key issue in the three-day strike and in the ongoing talks is ending this double standard, Gina Bowers, communications director for the union, said in a telephone interview.

Bowers said the workers, over half of whom are African American, have received strong support from the Black community.

Last week, the Stand for Security coalition of clergy, community and elected leaders (including the entire California Legislative Black Caucus), the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the NAACP and others called on the city’s real estate leaders to make security work a good job on which to raise a family, with access to affordable health care.

San Francisco security officers face a special problem, Bowers said, because soaring housing costs are forcing many to move out of the city where they were born and raised.

Though at present the contract talks are between the union and security firms such as ABM, Universal Protection Services and Securitas, Mayor Gavin Newsom has called on building owners to take a “greater role in fostering a quick resolution … that reflects the need for economic vibrancy and public safety in the Financial District.” The Board of Supervisors last week unanimously passed a second resolution calling on contractors and owners to “stop the double standards that are keeping security officers in poverty.”

Nationwide, SEIU represents over 55,000 security officers, including more than 10,000 in California.

mbechtel @pww.org