People Before Profit blog

TAKE BACK OHIO moves to high gear

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:51:00 +0000

Labor walks fan out through a dozen cities in battleground state

CLEVELAND — “We’ve swung into high gear,” said Harriet Applegate, Cleveland area coordinator for Take Back Ohio, the effort by organized labor to oust key right-wing Republicans and elect pro-working-family Democratic candidates for governor, the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

“Nearly 200 volunteers from unions in this area took part in the labor walk we held Saturday,” Applegate said. The volunteers, including union officials, rank and filers and family members, assembled Sept. 23 in the new apprenticeship training center of Laborers Local 310 to receive walking lists and instructions. They then fanned out into neighborhoods across Cuyahoga County to knock on doors of union households and members of Working America, the AFL-CIO’s community affiliate.

The volunteers left literature supporting Rep. Ted Strickland for governor and Rep. Sherrod Brown for U.S. Senate, and asked residents if they had made a decision in the races. The results showed overwhelming support for the labor-backed candidates. After walking for several hours, volunteers returned with their surveys and enjoyed a cookout.

That Saturday was the high point so far in the walks, which began in Cleveland Aug. 12 with about 40 volunteers. Applegate was especially pleased that the volunteers were coming both from unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO and those affiliated with the Change To Win coalition, showing that organized labor at the grassroots was closing ranks in the common fight to defeat its right-wing enemies.

Walks also took place in a dozen other cities and locations around Ohio, Applegate said.

Take Back Ohio aims to reach all 1.2 million labor and Working America households in the state through walks, phone banks, mailings and work site literature distributions. The purpose is to mobilize and educate union members through the structure of the labor movement, rather than through the campaigns of the candidates. The evidence from recent years, Applegate said, is that this is by far the most effective way to impact workers politically. Others note that it also builds labor’s independent political capacity.

According to Mike Reinecke, who coordinates the literature effort nationally from AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, already 2.4 million flyers have been distributed to every union in Ohio. Much of the literature is customized with the logos and phone numbers of each local and the issues of greatest concern to their members. Flyers issued in the name of building trades unions, for example, stress that Strickland’s opponent, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, has called for ending prevailing wage laws and union project labor agreements. He has bragged to the Association of Builders and Contractors that he is “the only ‘right-to-work’ candidate.”

Both Blackwell and Brown’s opponent, incumbent Sen. Mike DeWine, oppose raising the minimum wage, which will also be on the November ballot as an amendment to the state constitution.

According to the AFL-CIO, DeWine’s voting record is 90 percent anti-labor. He has supported the export of jobs overseas through corporate tax incentives and the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Brown fiercely opposed. NAFTA has cost Ohio nearly 50,000 jobs, the AFL-CIO says.

The contrast between the sides could not be greater. Brown and Strickland are co-sponsors of a bill to end anti-union provisions of federal labor law, and have voted with labor nearly 100 percent of the time during their terms in the Congress.

Take Back Ohio is keeping close tabs on weekly polls showing the union efforts are having a major impact. Statewide, Brown leads DeWine by a margin of 4-6 percent depending on the poll, and Strickland leads Blackwell by 12-21 percent. Among union households, both Brown and Strickland are leading by a margin of over two to one.

Indications are growing that the tide is turning throughout Ohio as polls show Republicans could lose House seats in Columbus and Cincinnati as well as the southeastern Ohio seat held by Rep. Bob Ney, who recently pled guilty to corruption charges.

Unions demand: Release Colombian labor lawyer

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 16:14:00 +0000

Public Services International, a trade union federation of 640 public sector unions in 155 countries, including the U.S., demanded the release of Dr. Alberto Carvajal Salcedo, 70, a Colombian labor and human rights lawyer imprisoned recently.

In a strongly worded letter to Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, PSI General Secretary Hans Engelberts said Carvajal is a “victim of an organized harassment campaign in order to prevent him from doing his work.” He said ensuring democracy in Colombia “means more than words.”

PSI demanded the immediate release of Carvajal so he can be “free to continue his commendable work.” The letter also asked that the Uribe government “as a matter of urgency also put in place all necessary measures to ensure that labor and human rights lawyers be guaranteed the safety and integrity they deserve and need to promote a just and democratic society for all.”

After winning a financial settlement for 47 university professors who lost their jobs in 1999, the government charged Carvajal for misappropriation of state funds. Although there was a yearlong investigation that exonerated Carvajal from any wrongdoing, the case was reopened. Many human rights and labor activists charge that both the order to reopen the case and the jailing of Carvajal are politically motivated, intended to send a chilling message to anyone willing to stand up for workers rights and dignity in Colombia.

Colombia has been called the most dangerous place on earth for trade unionists. Some 4,000 trade unionists have been murdered over the past 20 years.

Meanwhile, President George W. Bush said in a letter to the House and Senate that he intends to sign a “free trade agreement” with Colombia, Sept. 25. Free trade agreements have been disasters for workers, indigenous people and the environment in the U.S. and other “free-trade partners.”

The AFL-CIO opposes the agreement, saying that even though thousands of unionists have been murdered in Colombia, “this hasn’t stopped the Bush administration from pushing for a trade deal. Given such a ghastly record, members of Congress might want to ask whether they really want yet another pact that fails to protect workers’ rights.”

Living wage fight not over

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 04:04:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Although the City Council failed to overturn Mayor Richard Daley’s veto of the Big Box Living Wage Ordinance, supporters of the measure say the battle will continue.

The council had passed the ordinance by a 35-14 vote in July. Overriding the mayor’s veto required 34 votes, but three aldermen who originally voted for the ordinance, Shirley Coleman, Danny Solis and George Cardenas, switched sides Sept. 13.

The ordinance would have required retail stores in the city with over 90,000 square feet and $1 billion in sales to pay their employees $10 an hour with $3 in health care benefits by the year 2010.

Despite the outcome, “today was a victory for working men and women,” Alderman Joe Moore, sponsor of the ordinance, told the World at one of many rallies held downtown the day the veto was sustained. “After seven weeks of scare tactics by big business, fear-mongering and unrelenting opposition from the mayor, 60 percent still voted for a living wage, and that demonstrates a victory.”

“The battle does not end,” Moore told the rally, saying the issue would come up in city elections next year. “The ultimate victory will be a living wage in this city,” he predicted.

Assistant Pastor Louvena Hood with Redeemed Outreach Ministries, who is an ACORN member, emphasized the importance of a living wage. “We need more than just a job,” she told the World. “We need to worry about putting food on our tables. Parents need the opportunity to properly raise their children, to put them to bed and have dinner as a family.”

Illinois AFL-CIO Vice President Elwood Flowers linked the city’s living wage fight to national politics.

“We need to start in November” to “take back America” and “change the complexion of Congress,” he said in a phone interview. The “thugs in Washington who have invaded Iraq” are directly related to “gouging” corporate profiteers, Flowers said. “Wal-Mart is the biggest of them all.” The aldermen who voted against the living wage but “claim to speak for working families” should expect to pay a political price in the future, he said.

James Thindwa, executive director of Chicago Jobs with Justice, told the World that taking on big box companies is the right thing to do. Wal-Mart “pretends to be the savior,” but people know differently, he said. “People get it.”

Joe Lieberman no friend of working people

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 09:59:00 +0000

It is complete hypocrisy for Joe Lieberman to claim that he is above “partisan politics.” Quite the opposite: Lieberman has been a consistent enabler for the partisan politics of George W. Bush, against the interests of the people. The price has been high for the country and for Connecticut’s working families: over 46 million uninsured, sky-high gas prices, a new surge in factories moving out of Connecticut for higher profits elsewhere, and the tragedy of 2,600 U.S. soldiers killed and thousands more maimed in the war on Iraq.

Lieberman’s tired song in his bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate on the “Connecticut for Lieberman” line is that Democratic nominee Ned Lamont is stuck in “partisan politics.” After bolting the Democratic Party, which rejected him in the primary, Lieberman dismissed other Democrats’ endorsement of Lamont as “partisan politics.” He shrugs off criticism of his voting record as “partisan politics.” And he discounts Lamont’s stunning primary victory as “partisan politics” by the “left fringe.”

In reality, Lieberman’s brand of partisanship has been devastating to Connecticut’s workers.

Those unions who endorsed Lamont early acted because the Lieberman/Bush policies hurt their members. Lieberman’s support for school vouchers, undermining funding for public education, hurt teachers, students and parents. It resulted in Lamont endorsements by the Connecticut AFT and the Connecticut Education Association. The International Association of Machinists endorsed Lamont because they are losing jobs as a result of NAFTA, CAFTA and every trade agreement stacked in favor of multinational corporations that Lieberman voted for.

Among the state’s largest unions, AFSCME, SEIU and the UAW endorsed Lamont after the primary because their members’ needs are not served by collaboration with the anti-worker Bush administration. While they supported and received assistance from Lieberman in previous years, their principled stand is focused on the politics of the present and future. They have placed class loyalty over personal loyalty. By delivering votes, they will be in a strong position to hold their candidate accountable, after Election Day, to vote for the needs of working people.

Overwhelming opposition to the Iraq war was the catalyst for Lieberman’s defeat after 18 years, but it was about much more. What has aroused the ire of Connecticut voters is Lieberman’s arrogant disregard of the opinions and needs of his own constituents.

A June 9 Talking Points Memo by commentator Joshua Marshall exposes Lieberman’s behind-the-scenes accommodation to the Bush agenda: “It was always this statement or that, that seemed to support Social Security but really left the door open to some compromise on phase out. ... On and on and on. In the end it just seemed like ... an ingrained disinclination to take a stand, even in a case when it really mattered.”

Despite widespread public opposition to the appointment of extremist Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court, Lieberman, after voting no for the record, failed to support the filibuster that could have defeated the appointment. In response, the National Organization for Women became the first organization to endorse Lamont.

Lieberman was the only Democrat in New England to support the Cheney-Enron energy bill, and was one of very few Democrats to support the deployment of the so-called missile defense system that will stimulate the nuclear arms race.

The anger is about Lieberman’s priorities and partisanship that led him to disregard the decision of Democratic primary voters, create his own Connecticut for Lieberman line, and embrace the unofficial support of the Republican Party. National Republican strategists Dan Senor and Bill Kristol are funding TV ads for Lieberman by the “Vets for Freedom Action Fund.”

Despite the fact that Connecticut’s 2nd, 4th and 5th Congressional Districts are considered key to defeat Republican control of the U.S. House, Lieberman has refused to say who he is supporting in those races. The Democratic candidates (Joe Courtney, Diane Farrell, Chris Murphy), running neck-in-neck against Republican incumbents (Rob Simmons, Chris Shays, Nancy Johnson), are receiving strong support from Ned Lamont.

The need to challenge Lieberman in this election and take on the Bush agenda led activist leaders in Connecticut to call out for a candidate, and Ned Lamont stepped up to the plate. His winning message was that the $250 million a day being spent in Iraq needs to be brought home and invested in universal health care, public education and good jobs. His 10,000-vote primary victory resonated worldwide because it was a powerful expression of the great peace majority in our country.

There is no more effective way for the movement against the war on Iraq to gain leverage than to deliver the votes that will end Republican control of Congress by electing a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, and electing peace candidates like Ned Lamont. The nation and the world will see this, correctly, as a rejection of Bush’s war and the Republican campaign of fear. A victory in the House and the Senate will shake up politics as we know it.

The six weeks between now and Election Day provide a wonderful opportunity for the labor and peace movements to join hands, educate their members, families, neighbors and co-workers and build the kind of strong working relations that can move the people onto the offensive.

Joelle Fishman (joelle.fishman@pobox.com) is chair of the Connecticut Communist Party and also chairs the CPUSA Political Action Commission.

Dont lie to us

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 09:09:00 +0000

Workers’ Correspondence

The drive to organize 2,000 workers at Yale-New Haven Hospital moved into high gear this year when the hospital signed a landmark community benefits agreement. In addition to addressing community concerns about jobs, housing, education and traffic, the agreement restricts management’s use of the most extreme anti-union tactics. SEIU 1199 is now collecting authorization cards for a union election. Ray Milici has been a rank-and-file union leader at the hospital for over 40 years. He works in Dietary — the only department that currently has a union contract.

Management has been holding birthday parties all over the hospital. They’ve improved pensions. They’re even raising wages. For the most part, people realize that this is all because of the union drive.

In the last 18 months, workers at the hospital received over $2 an hour in raises. We went to see a manager after one of the raises. Some of the union women go to the same church as the manager. They told him, “You’re a deacon in the church, don’t lie to us.” We made him admit that the hospital raised wages because of the union drive.

Just because we have a community benefits agreement, it’s not like harassment has stopped. They find ways to get around the agreement. We’re involved in a real war.

Nobody expected this to be a pushover. We’re dealing with it.

There’s no doubt in my mind we will be victorious. More workers every day understand the hospital’s real intention to deceive the workers and deny them union rights and human rights.

— Ray Milici

Hotel workers celebrate new pact

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 08:03:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO — Celebration was in the air as union members gathered with Unite Here Local 2 President Mike Casey at the local’s headquarters Sept. 13 to announce a tentative agreement in their two-year contract struggle with 13 of the city’s largest hotels. A ratification vote is set for Sept. 22.

Rank-and-file negotiating team members told what the agreement means to them. Switchboard operator Aurolyn Rush said the agreement means being able to afford her cancer medication. Delia Medina said it means curbs on the backbreaking workloads she experiences as a room cleaner. Room service server Rafael Leiva said it means money “to invest in my kids.”

Citing gains in health care benefits, wages and pensions, workload protections and other improvements, Casey said the contract’s most important achievements are workers’ rights to remain union and keep their jobs when a hotel changes hands, and recognition of union status at new hotels when a majority of workers sign union authorization cards.

“The incredible transition in this industry with mergers and acquisitions has created a great deal of instability,” Casey said. “Now we have very strong language providing for guaranteed job security for our members when a hotel sells or changes hands.”

All seven hotel corporations involved in the talks also agreed that when new hotels are built or acquired in San Francisco and San Mateo County, they will recognize the union when a majority of workers sign authorization cards. Casey said that as part of the hotel workers’ national campaign, Starwood and Hilton Corps. have agreed to the same provision in several other cities.

The five-year contract covering some 4,000 workers is retroactive to August 2004. Provisions include full funding of current health benefits, with no increase in co-payments. The prescription drug cap is doubled to $4,000 per year. An employer attempt to create a two-tier benefit system was defeated. Hotel contributions to the pension fund increase to $208 per month, up from $123. Wages of non-tipped workers increase by $1 an hour in each year going forward. Tipped workers’ wages grow by 50 cents an hour each year, with retroactive lump sum payments for the past two years. Room cleaners gained workload protections.

The agreement marked the end of a two-year process that started when Local 2 workers struck four of the hotels in 2004, several weeks after the previous contract expired. The other hotels responded by locking out their workers. With Mayor Gavin Newsom interceding on the side of the union, and key health care providers pledging continued care for workers, the hotels abandoned the lockout that year.

After talks dragged on, last month workers voted by 93 percent to authorize another strike.

A boycott which the union says cost the hotels over $100 million will be lifted when the contract is ratified.

Casey said the union will now call on 18 other major hotels and additional worksites employing another 5,000 union workers to sign onto the same basic agreement.

In Chicago, workers at the Hilton Chicago, Drake, Palmer House Hilton and Hilton O’Hare Airport hotels earlier this month ratified a new contract raising room attendants’ wages nearly 21 percent, cutting their workloads and recognizing card-check neutrality at new area Hiltons. Unite Here Local 1 President Henry Tamarin called the pact “a significant step forward” for union workers. Tentative agreements have been reached with Starwood and Hyatt there.

Ford slashes spell pain for workers, communities; CEO to rake in millions

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 07:37:00 +0000

DETROIT — Ford’s latest plan to turn the company around puts on the “fast track” the biggest restructuring in the auto giant’s 103-year history. Bearing the pain will be autoworkers and the communities they live in.

Under the plan, announced Sept. 15, approximately 50,000 Ford workers will no longer have jobs by the end of 2008. The new cuts will leave Ford with less than 80,000 hourly and salaried U.S. workers, down from 130,000 in 2003.

The United Auto Workers has negotiated a buyout that is being offered to all 75,500 Ford workers represented by the union. Workers who sign up for one of eight different buyouts or early retirements must leave the company within the next 12 months.

Also getting the axe will be 10,000 salaried positions. This comes on top of 4,000 salaried jobs cut earlier this year. It means that by 2007, one-third of Ford’s white-collar jobs will be eliminated. But Ford expects many of these employees to be gone by next March.

By 2012, Ford will close two more plants on top of the 14 announced earlier this year.

The latest cuts have added to the already gloomy economic picture in Michigan, home to many Ford employees. Michigan’s official unemployment rate is 7 percent, and the state is number one in the nation in housing foreclosures.

Ford’s downsizing announcement came shortly after the arrival of new CEO Alan Mulally, a former Boeing executive who eliminated more than 30,000 jobs at the aircraft company.

While Mulally is implementing painful cuts at Ford, his own future is somewhat rosier. Mulally’s deal with his new employer is reportedly worth $35 million this year, including his salary, one-time bonuses and the value of stock options and restricted stock awards. That price tag doesn’t include other Ford-paid benefits for its new CEO, including two years of temporary housing in Michigan and unlimited personal travel on a company airplane. Next year, Mulally will be eligible to earn up to $16.5 million in salary and stock options.

In a policy speech just before the cuts were announced, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said, “To keep our consumer-based economy going strong, consumers need access to something other than affordable goods and services. We also need access to a continued stream of good jobs at good wages.” As workers lose income, he said, they’ll buy less consumer goods, local businesses will lose sales and local communities will lose tax revenue.

Among other things, Gettelfinger called for national health care funding; auto company investment in flex-fuel, clean diesel and advanced-technology vehicles like hybrid, electric and fuel-cell vehicles; and bankruptcy reform to stop Delphi’s cynical abuse of the bankruptcy process.

While Ford is closing unionized plants here, it is accelerating its production of nonunion vehicles in Mexico. Ford already builds the Fusion, Lincoln Zephyr and Mercury Milan in Mexico.

Dead workers are not a business cost

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 08:12:00 +0000

Our family was devastated when my brother, Gary Puleio, was killed at Meadville (Pa.) Redi-Mix Concrete in 2001. Gary had been employed there only three months as a cement truck driver. He fell 25 feet to his death, from a cement tower, while shoveling gravel off the hopper to clean it.

The company claimed Gary just wandered up there on his own at the end of his shift rather than being assigned this unpleasant task because he was the “new man.”

Our grief was compounded when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration accepted this implausible story. After admitting no wrongdoing, the company paid a $6,000 fine for having repeatedly violated safety rules like the posting of warning signs.

From the OSHA web site, we learned that Redi-Mix had multiple serious violations that were cited months before my brother was killed. These were “informally” settled with reduced fines called “abatements.”

Corporate access to OSHA

Gary’s case illustrates the vast discrepancies that exist between workers access to OSHA and that of corporations. Corporations routinely “negotiate” with OSHA to downgrade fines through “abatement,” which combined with inadequate workers’ compensation laws make it impossible to hold negligent employers liable.

OSHA fines are not issued as punishment, and no amount of money can ever compensate for the loss of life. (These were the tired excuses OSHA gave our family to justify the slap-on-the-wrist fine issued for my brother’s death.) However, the issuance of trivial fines and citations results in no accountability.

Consider these appalling facts:

• In the past 20 years, 170,000 workplace fatalities occurred, but only about 1,700 were considered by OSHA to be due to the willful violation of safety laws. Without a “willful” designation, it is difficult for prosecutors to make a case that an employer is criminally liable, and civil suits pursued by families are not likely to succeed.

• The percentage of cases being downgraded from willful to less serious violations has been rising steadily. In 2001, 60 percent of all cases were downgraded.

• Of the mere 1,700 willful cases, only 196 were referred to prosecutors, with only 81 convictions and 16 jail sentences.

• It is a misdemeanor to kill a worker by willfully violating safety laws. The maximum sentence is six months in jail.

Daily deaths

In 2003, 4.4 million workers were injured, 5,500 were killed and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases. On an average day, 150 workers lose their lives as a result of workplace injuries and diseases and another 12,000 are injured.

OSHA does not have the funding or staff to adequately oversee the safety of the 100 million workers under its jurisdiction. OSHA’s current budget of $464 million amounts to about $4 per worker. Federal OSHA has only about 900 safety inspectors and can only inspect workplaces on average once every 100 years.

White House culpability

The Bush administration has done nothing to correct this situation. It has overturned or blocked dozens of workplace protections and weakened job safety programs with such actions as repealing the ergonomics standards. It has killed dozens of worker protection measures, including rules on cancer causing substances, reactive chemicals and infectious diseases like TB. The Bush administration has the worst record on safety rules in OSHA’s entire history, having gone an entire term without issuing any significant new rules.

While trying to dismantle worker safety and health training programs, the Bush administration has increased funding for “outreach” to employers. It favors employer “voluntary” programs over enforcement and excludes workers and unions. In three years, only three “voluntary” non-enforceable guidelines — for nursing homes, poultry processing and retail grocery stores — have been issued.

Employer groups are fighting every attempt to regulate any hazard. This anti-regulatory ideology allows no room for common-sense regulation to protect workers and the community. Along with corporations, the under-regulated insurance industry continues to campaign for legislation to cut workers compensation benefits.

Who writes the rules?

Corporations now write the rules to regulate and control their profit-driven enterprises. Legislation now passes through the filters of corporate lobbyists and corporate-funded think tanks. The concept of “corporate personhood” — first embraced in an obscure legal doctrine from 1886 — suggests that corporations have the same rights as people.

Corporations have seized on this and claim they are entitled to “free speech” rights to influence elections. They claim the right to influence government agencies that were created to regulate them. This influence affects agencies that regulate the air we breathe, the water we drink, the products we purchase and the workplaces in which we toil. It threatens our health, our safety, our lives and the life of our planet.

We must fight to make workplaces safer. We must toughen laws that make the willful killing of workers a felony, not a misdemeanor. We have a moral obligation to not allow safety to be ignored and dead workers to be an accepted cost of doing business.

Dr. Donna Puleio Spadaro is a practicing oncologist in Pennsylvania. This column was based on her Labor Day remarks to a Unitarian Universalist Church.

Conn. machinists rally for Ned Lamont

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 06:40:00 +0000

EAST HARTFORD, Conn. — “This campaign has become a crusade for machinists all across America,” declared R. Thomas Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, at a Labor Day weekend rally here for Ned Lamont’s bid for U.S. Senate.

“I am so proud the Machinists in Connecticut and the teachers had the vision and guts to fight for it and win,” he said, referring to Lamont’s upset victory over Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Aug. 8 Democratic primary.

The Sept. 3 labor rally, held in the Machinists union hall across from the huge East Hartford Pratt and Whitney plant where workers build aircraft engines, was also in support of three Democratic candidates for House of Representatives who have a good chance of defeating Republican incumbents.

The aerospace workers had decided early on to support peace candidate Ned Lamont. They were angry about Lieberman’s support for the war on Iraq. They were also angry after a delegation of their leadership went to see Lieberman in Washington to object to his support for trade deals without labor or environmental protections, and Lieberman arrogantly kicked the workers out of his office.

Thanking the Machinists for their support “from Day One,” Lamont said his program for universal health care, public education and good jobs “gave people something to vote for, not just against.” He added, “We need a senator who is not going to play footsie with the administration.”

Lamont, recognizing the presence of workers from the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. who lost their jobs last month when the company decided to move elsewhere for higher profits, said, “Bush is driving the country into a ditch and we want a change.”

Turnout in the Aug. 8 primary was the highest in the state’s history. The Democratic Party gained 30,000 new voters, including 1,500 first-time voters and 1,500 who switched from “unaffiliated” to Democrat to be able to vote in the primary. Voters were driven by their opposition to the war in Iraq and Lieberman’s ties to the Bush administration.

In a fiery speech, Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), just returned from the Gulf Coast, asked, “How can it possibly be that the wealthiest nation cannot put the Gulf Coast back together in over a year?” Referring to the federal government’s positive role in responding to the devastating hurricane that hit Connecticut in 1938, Larson said the difference in response was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“FDR said the other side of the aisle was frozen in the ice of their own indifference,” he said, suggesting much the same is true today.

“Carry this message everywhere,” he said, calling Connecticut “ground zero in the fight to change Congress.” He pledged that with a Democratic majority “we will turn the country around in the first 100 hours. People need relief now.”

In the packed hall, over hamburgers and hot dogs, union members signed up for weekend labor walks to talk with co-workers and their families about the urgency of this election.

Buffenbarger’s visit here was part of a five-state tour to launch the union’s JUICE campaign, which concentrates on key pocketbook issues of Jobs, Utility rates, Insurance premiums for health care, Commuter woes and Educational equity.

Several gubernatorial campaigns are also being singled out as part of the effort. Since Labor Day, at least 1,500 union members have posted their names on a web-based “speakers wall” (www.RallyAround.us) pledging to vote for gubernatorial candidates who represent their needs on Nov. 7.

In addition to the IAM and the teachers union (AFT Connecticut), the United Autoworkers, the Service Employees, a Teamsters local and the Connecticut Education Association have endorsed Lamont. Other unions are still considering their endorsements.

Tentative pact reached in Detroit teachers strike

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 06:22:00 +0000

DETROIT — After 16 days on the picket line, the unity of 9,500 members of American Federation of Teachers Local 231 finally forced school officials to agree to a tentative pact potentially ending the strike here as soon as Sept. 14.

The teachers were forced out Aug. 28 after rejecting School Superintendent William Coleman’s demand for a two-year contract with 5.5 percent pay cut, increased health care payments and cuts in class preparation time. The district wanted $88 million in concessions from the union to help close a $105 million deficit in its $1.36 billion budget. Cuts to classes, shortchanging students and mismanagement were also major issues of the strike.

The tentative agreement includes a pay freeze for this school year, a 1 percent increase for 2007-2008 and a 2.5 percent increase for 2008-2009, said union executive board member Vince Consiglio. It also calls for all teachers to pay 10 percent of their health insurance costs, he said. Up until now, only teachers hired after 1992 had to share their health insurance costs.

“It’s not a good contract, but it’s a contract we can live with,” Consiglio said.

Teachers staged large, lively picket lines both at school administration offices and at schools throughout the strike.

On Sept. 9, several thousand striking teachers encircled the Fisher Building where Detroit Public School officials have their offices. The sight of thousands of teachers singing, chanting and dancing their way around the entire city block showed school officials teacher’s determination to forge a better contract.

Although union members were threatened with fines and jail time, they defied a judge’s back-to-work order. These actions showed school officials that teachers were not going to be divided or intimidated. Only a handful of teachers crossed the picket line.

Schulze Elementary school teachers Barbara Garrett, Loretta Danforth and Elizabeth Coverson were unanimous in saying the strike was not only about protecting their livelihood but also ensuring that money and resources are directed to the students they teach. While important, “pay is not the main issue,” said Coverson, a second grade teacher with 29 students in her class. Class size, cuts in music, gym and art, and the inadequate physical maintenance of schools are also top concerns, they said.

Money is being misdirected by school officials and by our federal government, numerous teachers said.

Danforth, a kindergarten teacher with 28 students in her class and no aide, linked the problems to inadequate funding and high-stakes testing. “The president has not funded No Child Left Behind” and local school officials are more concerned with their own welfare than that of the children, she said.

School officials spend $3,000 per student on five separate standardized tests, money that could go a long way toward easing the burden placed on teachers and students, teachers said.

Teachers have long been making sacrifices to help their schools. Garrett runs the media center at Schulze and last year spent over $1,000 of her personal money on supplies. Her husband even volunteers time after work to help set up the center.

Coverson was on the textbook screening committee and for six weeks volunteered her time. In the end, she said, not only did school officials pick the textbook the teachers rated as the lowest, “but they had purchased it before the committee had even started meeting.” Teacher input was wasted and not appreciated, she said.

Danforth said parents ask her how she’s able to teach under such difficult conditions that are too often overlooked by school officials and others. “Until you walk in our shoes, you won’t understand it,” she said.

Janitors speak out for better wages

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 03:47:00 +0000

PHILADELPHIA - A spirited and militant group of Service Employee Union 32BJ members, their friends and supporters marched here to defend area standards for office cleaners on Aug. 31.

Their message was to Arthur Johnson, who has cleaning contracts with several center city Philadelphia businesses. They wanted Johnson to know that they were there and unionized office cleaners here are paid $12-$13 per hour with benefits. Johnson, they said, is trying to pull the rug out from under those standards by paying workers $7 per hour with no benefits.

The protesters had several elected officials in their corner. State rep. Mark Cohen told the rally, “Trying to lower the standard is bad for you and bad for the City of Philadelphia.”

News headlines recently announced that Philadelphia has the highest percentage of people living in poverty of any U.S. big city. Cohen said that poverty must be fought by fighting for higher wages.

State Rep. Angel Cruz said that he came not as a state representative, but as a union brother from Local 274. “Whatever you need, we’re here for you, whatever it takes, as long as it takes.”

Lance Haver, a longtime consumer affairs advocate thanked the workers for standing up for working people, and went on to say if A. J. gets away with lowering wages, it will hurt everyone in the city.

The protesters rallied at buildings staffed by Arthur Johnson employees, marching past the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall for worker justice.

Local union hosts Iraqi worker photo exhibit

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 08:10:00 +0000

“You know longies here in L.A. or over there in Iraq are just working stiffs trying to do right by their families,” said Joe Kordich, retired longshore worker with Local 13 of the International Longshore Warehouse Union. “You can see it here in these pictures. They remind me of some of the guys I worked with.”

Joe was visiting a photo exhibit this past March titled “Iraqi Workers Organize — Iraq’s Oil and Port Workers and Their Union” displayed at the ILWU clerks’ Local 63 hiring hall in San Pedro, Calif. The photos, some of which appeared previously in The Dispatcher newspaper, were taken during visits to Iraq by David Bacon, who is a labor writer-photographer and depicts Iraqis working on the docks and in the oil fields of Basra, Iraq.

The photos show workers unloading ships, rigging oil wells, attending union meetings as well as leading their regular family lives.

One photo shows working families living next to a military dump containing radiation-contaminated scrap metal.

“These are hard living conditions, but these workers look tough, and that woman,” Kordich said, pointing to a photo of an Iraqi union leader, “looks like she could hold her own at any longshore meeting.”

Joe smiled as he left the exhibit, pointing his thumb back over his shoulder at the photos saying, “You know, with their strength combined with ours, we could kick ass.”

Local 63 held its opening after its membership meeting March 1 and kept it up for a month. People from all over the area came to see it.

Since the exhibit included images of oil workers as well as longshore workers, it was shown at the Steelworkers PACE Local 8-675 in Los Angeles in February. There the hat was passed and money was raised. The exhibit is now at the L.A. Labor Center.

The photo exhibit is funded by the Diane Middleton Foundation of San Pedro and is co-sponsored by the Steelworkers PACE Local 8-675, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, ILWU Local 63 and the United Teachers of Los Angeles.

This article was reprinted from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union’s newspaper The Dispatcher, with permission from the author.

Dont steal the big box ordinance

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 08:00:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Despite a monthlong million-dollar campaign to scare residents into opposing the “big box” living wage ordinance passed by the City Council July 26, a new poll of Chicago voters shows overwhelming support for the legislation.

Wal-Mart, Target and Mayor Richard Daley have mounted a blitz to turn public opinion against the ordinance. Daley is seeking to switch the votes of two aldermen to sustain his expected veto.

The ordinance calls for raising wages of “big box” retail workers to $10 an hour with $3 an hour in benefits by 2010. It covers all stores of 90,000 square feet or more and companies that do at least $1 billion in sales annually.

In the poll, 71 percent of voters supported the ordinance. Support was strong across the city, with 63 percent among whites, 81 percent among African Americans and 80 percent among Latinos.

In addition, 68 percent said they would look unfavorably at aldermen who voted against the ordinance but then voted themselves a pay raise at the same meeting. Municipal elections are next February. For the first time in many years Daley and several aldermen are vulnerable.

The campaign to undo the vote has been relentless. Target and Wal-Mart announced they were freezing plans for new stores in the city. Full-page ads have appeared in several newspapers. Over 200,000 residents received phone calls trying to convince them that the city would lose jobs and millions of dollars in revenues.

But ordinance supporters aren’t backing down an inch.

On Labor Day, the Chicago Federation of Labor honored the 35 aldermen who voted for the ordinance as “living wage warriors.”

At an Aug. 30 rally at Daley’s office to announce the poll results, Flora Johnson, a homecare worker and member of SEIU Local 880, declared, “We demand that Mayor Daley not steal the big box ordinance.”

Alderman Ricardo Muñoz blasted the big-business-directed campaign. “We are talking about the lie of corporate America,” he said. “They say they can’t pay a living wage because we will lose jobs. They said the same thing in 1997 when we passed the living wage ordinance. Not one job was lost.”

Aldermen organized a hearing Aug. 17 where Santa Fe, N.M., Mayor David Cross and San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano testified. Both cities have minimum wage ordinances for businesses, including those employing 25 or more workers in Santa Fe. The two officials testified the ordinances have not scared off big box retailers. The Aug. 30 rally coincided with the opening of a new Lowe’s store in Santa Fe.

Ordinance supporters demonstrated Aug. 16 in front of a South Side Target store to spotlight that the giant corporation had received nearly $10 million in subsidies from the city.

Meanwhile a study by economists at the University of Illinois at Chicago underscored the “hidden cost of low-wage work.” Each year taxpayers pay $2 billion for public assistance to low-wage workers and their families who need food stamps, Medicaid and child care assistance. UIC researchers say low-paying jobs, including at big box stores, force almost a half-million Illinois families onto public assistance.

Womens groups protest plan to downsize Womens Bureau

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 07:37:00 +0000

Several leading women’s organizations, including the Coalition of Labor Union Women, are vigorously protesting the latest scheme by GOP President George W. Bush and his Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to downsize and outsource much of her department’s Women’s Bureau.

In an Aug. 1 letter initiated by the National Council of Women’s Organizations and Wider Opportunities for Women, the groups call on Chao to reverse planned budget cuts at the Women’s Bureau and instead give it increased money in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.

The cuts and the outsourcing will affect half of the bureau’s jobs, some 85 in total, which will be put up for bidding between the bureau’s workers and private contractors.

The Women’s Bureau is one of a number of DOL agencies whose functions Chao is trying to outsource, in line with a Bush initiative — supposedly due for completion by 2010 — to transfer as many federal jobs as possible to private contractors.

Such transfers would also let Bush avoid federal labor laws and federal worker unions, according to the American Federation of Government Employees. AFGE Local 12 represents DOL’s workers. Federal worker unions have detailed how Bush’s Office of Management and Budget tried to rig rules in such outsourcing struggles in favor of the private contractors.

The Women’s Bureau’s work is still needed, the groups told Chao, since “too many women are in jobs that do not pay self-sufficiency wages, do not provide benefits such as health care, and are the first to be cut during an economic downturn.”

Regional offices of the bureau “ensure women are aware of the legal protections against workplace abuses and guide women to appropriate resources and agencies. America’s working women will pay the price” for a much less effective bureau, the letter states.

If Chao doesn’t respond, the groups will again take their case to Congress.

— Press Associates Inc.

Gary teachers win nine-day strike

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 07:32:00 +0000

GARY, Ind. — Meeting at the city’s largest high school on Sept. 1, 1,500 members of American Federation of Teachers Local 4 loudly and unanimously approved a new one-year contract that everyone agreed was a tremendous victory for the union.

The agreement, announced by Local 4 President Sandra Irons, ended a nine-day strike. The teachers had been working under an expired contract since December 2004.

The new contract provides for wage increases of 2 percent and no change in insurance costs. In addition, paraprofessionals were given health care coverage for the first time.

The union came out stronger and more united than when it entered the strike, as almost no one crossed the line.

“The teachers taught the [school] board a lesson about solidarity,” said English teacher Carolyn McCrady. “They were unable to break our union. We all held fast. Students and parents came to picket lines. The whole city wanted this strike settled, but in a fair and just way.”

In a raucous meeting convened by the elected school board, nearly 2,000 parents in attendance demanded a settlement. It came hours later in the middle of the night.

The board had angered the community by its foot-dragging in negotiations. The school superintendent drew the community’s ire by sending a letter to the educators threatening to fire and replace them, to stop their insurance before it expired, and to end the union dues check-off, an action allowed by state law after a strike.

Prior to the strike, some board members made disparaging comments about the teachers. Others took trips to as far away as Japan, incurring many questionable expenses that were exposed in the local media.

Two members of the board supported the teachers, including one who was heavily supported by the unions and who took office less than two months before the strike.

The board had demanded an end to the teachers’ one-hour unpaid lunch period and that teachers pay more for their insurance. The new contract provides for a 45-minute lunch break, but the board has a year to come up with a workable plan on how to implement it — either by cutting the workday or paying the teachers for the time.

It is illegal for teachers to strike in Indiana; the last strike in Gary was in 1984. Union activists said that this time the board was trying to break the union, thinking many younger teachers would cross the line. Part of the settlement included a “no reprisal” clause.

One worker was injured during the picketing when she was struck by a car crossing the line. The teacher is still on crutches. No one was charged in the incident.

Gary has a population of over 80,000, with 16,000 students in the schools that were struck.

Latest jobs report: Good for Wall Street, bad for workers

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 07:26:00 +0000

For the last five months, job creation has failed to keep up with demand. But you’d never know that from most news stories.

Within minutes of the Labor Department’s report on the employment situation for August (issued Sept. 1), The Associated Press reported: “Hiring picked up in August as employers added 128,000 jobs, pulling the unemployment rate down to 4.7 percent, sending a Labor Day message that the economic expansion still has staying power.” The AP dispatch said the report should ease fears that the expansion is in danger of fizzling out.

The AP failed to mention that 150,000 new jobs are needed every month to keep up with the growth of the working age population. For the last five months, job growth has averaged only 119,000. Sounds like a fizzle to me!

Harder to find a job

Stock prices moved up in response to the sluggish job growth. For Wall Street, the news means that interest rates are likely to remain relatively low.

For workers, the news means it is harder to find a job. Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute points out that 18.4 percent of the unemployed have been seeking work for at least six months. Historically, at today’s level of unemployment, only 11.7 percent were out of work for that long.

But the weak job market also affects those who are working. Wages are barely keeping up with inflation, and most of the wage gains are going to higher-paid workers and managers. Why should employers raise wages when there are plenty of unemployed workers knocking at the door?

Bernstein views the August report as confirming an emerging trend of lower job growth. “The group who might view this trend as a disappointment,” he says, “is the tens of millions of workers whose living standards have yet to reflect much gain at all from this recovery. If this slower job growth regime persists, it is unlikely that their bargaining clout will improve to the point where they have a chance to claim their fair share of the growth they have been instrumental in creating.”

With the word “recession” appearing with increasing frequency in business publications, the November elections assume exceptional importance. Following the 2001 recession, the Republican Congress lavished tax cuts on the rich, but was exceptionally stingy in the amount and duration of extended unemployment benefits. Changing Congress is the first step (and only the first step) in fighting for a decent job for everyone who wants to work, and for a decent safety net for those who can’t find jobs.

How to read the numbers

Some final notes about the August Employment Situation report:

First: about half of the workers displaced by Hurricane Katrina have been unable to return home. For those who are still displaced, unemployment is 22.2 percent. But we won’t have to worry about them much longer. After October, the Labor Department will no longer collect information about Katrina evacuees.

Second: some readers may have noticed a seeming contradiction. If too few jobs have been created to absorb new entrants to the labor force, why is the unemployment rate the same today (4.7 percent) as it was in April?

The unemployment rate is based on a survey of 60,000 households conducted by the Census Bureau. That survey shows an average gain of 188,000 jobs per month from April thru August. The Labor Department also conducts an establishment survey covering 400,000 businesses and government worksites. There are many technical differences between the surveys, but the establishment survey is considered a far more accurate reflection of the number jobs in the economy. The figure of 119,000 jobs per month comes from the establishment survey.

Standoff continues in Oaxaca, Mexico

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 16:37:00 +0000

After a brutal police attack against a radio and television station, a tense standoff continues in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, where striking teachers and popular organizations are demanding that right-wing Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz resign.

Witnesses said gunmen attacked the Oaxacan TV and radio station Aug. 21 in Oaxaca city, destroying its antennas and equipment. The station had been occupied by women belonging to the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO) since Aug. 1. Several people guarding the site were wounded, according to news reports.

Similar reports of military action against protester-occupied media stations were reported elsewhere in the state, with at least one activist’s death reported.

APPO, a broad coalition including unions, peasant organizations, municipalities and human rights groups, has declared itself the supreme authority in the state and calls the state government, led by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), illegitimate. APPO has accused the PRI governor of ordering the killing, torture and kidnapping of opponents as well as wrongful jailings on false charges.

APPO called a statewide work stoppage on Aug. 31. About 50,000 people marched in Oaxaca city on Sept. 1 to press their demand that Ulises Ruiz resign.

“Oaxaca city is enveloped in an enormous curtain of smoke” from hundreds of bonfires lit by protesters, Karla Garza wrote in a report posted on a Mexican communist youth organization web page. City residents are building new barricades and reinforcing existing ones, she said, “to impede armed groups that Ulises Ruiz sends in the night to attack the city while in the day he repeats like a ‘merolico’ (parrot) before the mass media that he is looking for dialogue.”

Teachers belonging to the National Education Workers Union continue their three-month-old strike for higher salaries, a higher minimum wage for workers in the state and better educational facilities for students. The union says much of the state education budget is siphoned off through corruption.

Despite the violence and economic hardship, Oaxaca-based journalist NAncy Davies reports in Narco News that there is widespread support for APPO and the teachers.

Meanwhile, APPO leaders met with the federal secretary of internal affairs in Mexico City Aug. 31 to try to resolve the statewide conflict. More meetings are planned.

Need protection from unions? Bush Department of Labor races to rescue

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 08:05:00 +0000

Anyone who feels that getting protection from their employers is taking away their “rights” will be relieved to learn that the United States Department of Labor, George W. Bush in charge, is racing to the rescue.

On Aug. 21, the DOL web site (www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/olms/CSRApage.htm) published a “final rule” requiring “labor organizations to give members notice of their Civil Service Reform Act rights.”

The document goes on to list a number of complaints that union members might file against their union and provides detailed methods for obtaining government help in attacking their union.

It is truly noble of the government to provide information and encouragement for individual union members to help undermine and destroy the only organizations that might protect them from being crushed by employers.

However — and I offer this as a modest suggestion — it is also helpful that the DOL document can be easily adapted to order the bosses to explain workers’ rights to their employees. For example, it could say that employee rights include, among other things: the right to organize unions, the right to overtime pay, the right to freedom from sexual harassment, the right to dignity on the job, the right to decent pay and benefits, the right to whatever pension and retirement benefit plan the employees were promised when they hired on, the right to workers’ compensation when injured, the right to unemployment compensation when laid off, and on and on.

Everyone is looking forward to the Bush administration’s issuance of such a detailed list of rights and the procedures for obtaining government help in defending those rights.

Jim Lane (flittle7@yahoo.com) is a labor activist in North Texas.

Class struggle is a fact, not a theory

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 08:00:00 +0000

Let me make something perfectly clear up front. Along with some powerful disagreements, I have a great deal of respect for Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees union. He and his union have made and continue to make important contributions to labor. SEIU is a powerful and innovative union with hundreds of thousands of great leaders and activists. I mention Stern here because he has been most outspoken in the big business press about what I believe to be some very wrong ideas in the labor movement; wrong ideas that very much need to be debated.

Is Stern right that class struggle trade unionism is outdated and a leftover from the heyday of industrial unionism? Is he right that corporate globalization is inevitable and all that unions can do is go along to get along? I think not.

Class struggle trade unionism is only outdated if the class struggle is over. For most workers, public or private, that’s a bit of a hard sell. For most working people, the class struggle is more apparent now than it has been since the 1930s. Workers’ wages are declining and there is a record-breaking wealth gap. We face the most concerted union-busting corporate attack on worker rights in 70 years. Pensions and health care are being eliminated. The rising ultra-right political agenda is filled with attacks on the working class, featuring racism, immigrant-bashing and attacks on women and youth. Tax cuts and war are draining resources from education, health, human and public services in cities and rural areas. In short: from the working class to the pockets of the rich.

There are incredible new global concentrations of capital, and ever-growing corporate and capitalist power. Bush’s right-wing agenda, echoed in Congress and the Supreme Court, is not primarily about so-called moral or cultural issues. Those are mostly cynical smokescreens to mask an unprecedented shift of power, wealth and rights to the corporations and banks. The unprecedented profits of the oil conglomerates, the banks and the other transnationals are the spoils of class struggle.

Dare we say it? The whole Republican right-wing agenda is “class warfare” against labor and the people.

Legions of union-busting lawyers serve as the advance infantry of big business. Government agencies including the Departments of Labor and Commerce, the NLRB and OSHA are twisted into agencies of attack against workers, without much pretense of neutrality.

That’s pretty much class warfare by any definition. Yet the right has convinced some that calling it class warfare or the class struggle is too radical. What a great way to disarm us.

We’ve all watched some politicians retreat at the accusation of class warfare. But without facing directly the fact that there is a capitalist class that is going all-out to turn back the clock on the working class, how can we possibly fight back effectively? We are not under attack from a few bad apples in the corporate world — we are under attack by a system called capitalism. And capitalism is organized class struggle dominated by the capitalist class. In plain language, their profits come out of our hides. It really is labor that creates all wealth.

Few corporations are willing to give up profiteering when they clearly have the upper hand. When the unions are stronger, corporations have to make some concessions. But with the Bush administration and attacks of the last 20 years, unions are weakened and corporations see no need to give any ground.

Some argue that a few labor leaders promote cooperation and discount the class struggle as a tactic. They say these union leaders want to appear reasonable and cooperative to coax concessions out of the “better” employers. The trouble is, it’s not only corporations that hear the call of such labor leaders for cooperation and no class-struggle fight back. Workers losing everything under the corporate onslaught hear it too. Where does that leave them? This is the kind of thinking that leads to ideas like the notion that the only folks unions can really organize and defend now are workers whose jobs can’t be outsourced. “An injury to one is an injury to all,” the real power of class struggle trade unionism, goes out the window.

Not recognizing the reality of the class struggle leads to many other wrong ideas. Like arguing against single-payer health care because big pharmaceutical and insurance won’t go along. Or ideas that the global working class can’t take on global capital and win, so therefore it’s best to help the corporations globalize “humanely.”

Should class struggle trade unionism be updated and renewed? Of course. The struggle has changed and new strategies, new tactics are needed. The struggle is more global than ever before. SEIU has recognized this in some important campaigns and gone for global solidarity. But global solidarity can’t just be one fight at a time. It has to be broader and bigger and, well, more global.

Marx once famously said that he hadn’t invented the class struggle. And none of us has the power to abolish it by saying it ain’t so.

Scott Marshall (scott@rednet.org) is chair of the Communist Party USA’s Labor Commission.

EDITORIAL: The power of unity

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 07:46:00 +0000

On Sept. 5, 1882, some 10,000 workers paraded in New York City, organized by the Knights of Labor. That unpaid day off was the start of what later became Labor Day.

Today, 104 years later, the labor movement has joined with millions of immigrant workers and social justice advocates in a united struggle for labor and human rights. Undaunted by the anti-worker Bush administration and its right-wing enforcers, and by divide-and-conquer corporate attacks, the growing unity of today’s broad labor-led movement is bringing together U.S.-born and immigrant, documented and undocumented, young and old, men and women of all colors and ethnicities.

Two recent events tell the story.

At a press conference in Chicago last week, Pastor Albert D. Tyson III, an African American who is president of Clergy Speaks Interdenominational, made it clear that immigrant workers and the Black community share much in common. Tyson was one of a group of African American clergy who came to support immigrant activist Elvira Arellano who is fighting deportation to Mexico in order to remain with her young son, a U.S. citizen.

“We need to unite in the commonality of struggle so our people will have victory,” Tyson declared.

Last month, the AFL-CIO announced a new “watershed” partnership with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network — linking 140 immigrant worker centers around the country with the power of organized labor to strengthen workplace rights for all workers.

As we celebrate these signs of a growing, energized and united working class and people’s movement, we know that the struggles for workers’ rights, for equality, for justice for immigrant workers, for a decent, humane society, will not be won easily. But as the long and proud history of workers’ struggles tells us, there is strength and power in unity. We look forward to new holidays to celebrate the victories to come.