People Before Profit blog

When your union contract expires Who do you want in the White House?

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 05:46:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — As 4,000 workers at Yale University gear up for a contract fight next year, and 2,000 workers at Yale New Haven Hospital continue their organizing drive, the question of who will be president looms large.

Asked “Who do you want in the White House when your union contract expires?” the answer was near unanimous for Barack Obama.

“I just know in my gut that Obama is interested in the well-being of common working people, and McCain is interested in the well-being of big business,” said Susan Klein, a worker in Yale’s library system.

Her gut feeling is echoed by a report on the AFL-CIO web site: “Obama backed working family issues 95 percent of the time in the U.S. Senate, while Sen. John McCain — who voted 95 percent with Bush against working family issues — sides with wealthy bankers and Wall Street.”

Ernie Thompson, a dining hall worker at the university, reflected on the coming contract negotiations. “We’re losing power every minute the Republicans are in office.” Most of his co-workers support Obama, but a few still need to be convinced to vote, said Thompson, who carries voter registration forms with him on the job. “They don’t believe in the political system. They’ve been had too many times.”

For those co-workers who are confused by extremist ads portraying Obama as unpatriotic and inexperienced, Thompson brings the facts about the candidates’ voting records. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm among the African Americans. Some white guys in the skilled trades had no problem with Bush, but a lot are coming over to our side because with the Republicans, unions and job security are out the window,” he said.

Tammy Porter, who works in the hospital cafeteria, supports Obama because “he’s down with the union.” Co-worker Mamie Evans said, “We’ve gotta have Barack to survive.” These workers, who have been trying to organize the hospital’s other departments into the union in the face of illegal management intimidation, are most concerned about passage of the Employee Free Choice Act to back up workers’ right to organize. Obama is a co-sponsor of the EFCA. McCain voted against it.

Food service worker Ray Milici described the stakes: “If we get a pro-labor president, we can change the labor board. We can pass the Employee Free Choice Act. McCain is anti-union. If McCain wins, there’s no chance for the rest of the workers at the hospital to get a union.”

Yale workers are also worried about protecting their health benefits. Their hard-won union contracts include full family health coverage at no cost. McCain’s health care proposal would tax those benefits, costing Yale workers up to $3,500 per year.

Union spokesperson Evan Cobb described this as “adding tax burden to us while shifting taxes off the wealthiest Americans.”

Unite Here, the parent union, was an early endorser of Obama. “It’s important to our international union to support a candidate who believes health care is a right,” said Cobb adding that McCain’s proposal would weaken the excellent health plan now enjoyed by union workers at Yale.

Cobb also addressed presidential appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. He cited the NLRB’s decision, under Clinton, affirming graduate teachers’ right to union representation. But the labor board appointed by Bush revoked those rights. At Yale, graduate teachers are still struggling for recognition.

After winning the congressional elections in 2006, “there’s a much greater sense of hope,” said Cobb. Union members are volunteering in Virginia, as well as locally. “People are aware of the relation between the federal election and the local impact at the community level.”

“The Republicans are stockpiling military weapons, but there’s nothing for heating assistance, schools, crime, environmental cleanup,” said Ernie Thompson. “We’ve lost all our afterschool programs, summer jobs for kids. The Republicans say there’s no money, but they bail out the financial companies.”

Obama’s experience as a community organizer who stresses workers’ involvement is encouraging to the Yale unions, who emphasize membership involvement to organize co-workers and build alliances with the New Haven community,

The unions say their commitment to organizing will continue after Election Day, providing grassroots muscle to pass EFCA.

Milici thinks the election outcome will have an impact on workers’ attitudes: “If McCain wins, the employer will feel empowered. If Obama wins, the workers will feel empowered.”

Thompson agreed: “We need a victory. If Obama wins, people will say we’ve got a voice now.” This will help mobilizing the membership for the next contract negotiations.

Miners plan work stoppage over anti-Obama film

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:42:00 +0000

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – (AP)Union leaders say a National Rifle Association film crew tried to coerce West Virginia miners into bad-mouthing presidential hopeful Barack Obama on camera, and that the union plans a brief work stoppage in protest.

The United Mine Workers will call for the stoppage at Consol’s Blacksville No. 2 mine next week, union President Cecil Roberts said Monday at a news conference with representatives of Obama's West Virginia campaign in Charleston. Roberts said the union, which has endorsed Democrat Obama for president, is unhappy that Consol allowed the camera crew to ask miners leading questions about the candidate such as: 'What do you think about losing your Second Amendment rights?'

'This, I think, is an attempt to try to twist the facts here,' he said. 'We're just hoping people aren't misled.'

The NRA has not endorsed a candidate. But it is sharply critical of Obama, calling him a 'lying rabble rouser' on its Web site and claiming he has supported numerous antigun measures.

Hunting and shooting are time-honored pursuits in West Virginia and gun ownership has been a pivotal issue in recent presidential elections. In 2000, then-NRA President Charlton Heston rallied members during a speech in Beckley a week before the election. Four years later, the NRA used billboards, 30-minute television infomercials and mailings in West Virginia as part of a $20 million national campaign to expose Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry as what the NRA called the 'Cape Cod fraud.'

The gun lobby is gentler with Republican presidential hopeful John McCain. Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre has called the Arizona senator 'a friend to gun owners.'

The NRA denied the union's charges.

'This is an effort by the Obama campaign to try and shift the focus away from Barack Obama's abysmal record on guns,' spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. 'I checked with our crew that was out there and they said they didn't coerce anyone.'

However, Blacksville miners Jim Toothman and Ken Foyles described it differently.

Toothman says a mine manager asked him to go outside to speak with the NRA, without warning him he'd be interviewed by a woman on camera.

'She tried to lead me into how to word the answers,' Toothman said. 'I ended the conversation about that point.'

Foyles never went on camera after watching the crew coach a co-worker's answers about her 'concerns' about Obama.

'It was my impression they wanted me to bash Barack Obama,' Foyles said.

A Consol spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Roberts called Obama a 'great defender' of the right to keep and bear arms and said running mate Joe Biden is a gun owner.

'None of us believe that Barack Obama is going to take anyone's guns,' Roberts said.

A UMW official said the union represents 450 of the 500 employees at the mine in Monongalia County. The underground mine produces about 5 million tons of coal per year. UMW contracts allow 'memorial periods,' which halt production by allowing members an unpaid day off.

The Obama campaign, which turned away a camera crew working for the NRA from the news conference, released a one-page sheet outlining the Illinois senator's support for the right to bear arms.

GOP targets key states with dirty tricks

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 04:34:00 +0000

The AFL-CIO has launched a new voting rights protection program to help protect working-class voters against dirty tricks in the fall elections. My Vote, My Right aims “to ensure votes cast at the ballot box are properly counted,” a post at the AFL-CIO blog reported Sept. 11. And none too soon.

Reports indicate that Republican Party operatives in Michigan and Ohio, two battleground states, are planning to use the foreclosure epidemic to disenfranchise voters.

The Michigan Messenger, an independent web site, reported that James Carabelli, who chairs the Macomb County GOP on the outskirts of Detroit, plans to bring a list of foreclosed homes to the polls Nov. 4 to challenge the eligibility of thousands of voters who he claims may be casting an improper ballot.

The report quotes a civil rights lawyer’s view that the foreclosure list is probably not an adequate source of information about an individual’s residency.

The Messenger also reported that there are strong ties between the foreclosure industry in Michigan and the John McCain campaign. According to the story, “McCain’s regional headquarters are housed in the office building of foreclosure specialists Trott & Trott. The firm’s founder, David A. Trott, has raised between $100,000 and $250,000 for the Republican nominee.”

Michigan state government data reveal a racist dimension to the targeting of homeowners who have received a foreclosure notice, the Messenger suggested. According to the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth, 60 percent of people who purchased a home using subprime loans were African Americans, the majority of whom back Democratic candidates and Barack Obama.

But African Americans aren’t the only target of the Republican vote suppression scheme. It targets Michigan working families of all races hardest hit by the recession. Recent polls show these voters, earning less than $50,000, support Barack Obama by double digits.

Statewide, the Messenger reported, Republicans admit to planning to suppress the vote in other ways. Near Flint, instead of organizing voter registration drives and positive campaigns for their candidates, local Republicans are training party loyalists and lawyers to challenge voters using a variety of procedural issues.

These Republican activities in Flint and Detroit aim to lower the number of votes by knocking people off the rolls, eliminating the votes they cast, or simply creating slow-downs at polling places on Election Day in order to discourage those in line.

In Franklin, Ohio, Doug Preisse, the local Republican Party boss, told a Columbus newspaper that his machine plans to use similar methods of vote suppression there.

The McCain campaign has also directly undertaken “dirty tricks” in the two states. According to Cincinnati.com, an absentee ballot request form sent out by the McCain campaign to 1 million voters in Ohio, many of them Democrats and independents, inaccurately reproduced the state’s absentee ballot request form and has been ruled improper.

Voters using those forms will see their request denied or discarded, Cincinnati.com reported this week. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner (D) caught the error and urged voters to contact their county board of elections to get a new request form.

The error on the McCain campaign’s form is expected to cost Ohio taxpayers additional funds to replace the improperly printed forms. At this point Ohio has no legal means to require the McCain campaign to reimburse the counties that have to send out new forms. So far McCain’s campaign has refused to say whether it will repay local boards of elections for its “error.”

Similar forms were also mailed out in Michigan to independent and Democratic-leaning voters. The forms contain inaccurate addresses and other errors that could disenfranchise voters who use the forms.

In Virginia, another battleground state, the AFL-CIO reported that Republicans deliberately tried to confuse student voters about where they are eligible to register and vote. A Republican press release misled some students into believing that if they registered to vote using their address at the university, their parents could no longer claim them as dependents on their income taxes. And in Mississippi, Republican Gov. Haley Barbour ordered the elimination of party affiliation on the ballot there to confuse voters about that state’s important Senate race between Democrat Ronnie Musgrove and ultra-right Republican Roger Wicker.

jwendland@politicalaffairs.net

Immokalee slavery case called 'beyond outrage'

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 04:11:00 +0000

In a federal case, five members of a family in Immokalee, Fla., pleaded guilty Sept. 2 to enslaving Mexican and Guatemalan farm workers for more than two years. Slavery in the United States has been banned for 130 years.

In a 17-count indictment, members of the Navarette family held captive more than a dozen men. The workers were forced to sleep in boxes, shacks and trucks on the family’s property. The family-owned company enslaved immigrant workers in North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida farm fields.

Workers were told they would earn a minimal wage but were driven into ever-increasing debt by the Navarette family who chained and beat them and threatened more abuse if the workers tried to leave. Each worker was charged for his meal and shower and they were told to urinate and defecate in outside corners near their sleeping areas. According to the indictment, they were never paid.

Last January several of the workers escaped from a ventilation hatch in a locked box truck in Immokalee and managed to find their way to the local authorities. Soon after their horror stories were revealed, federal agencies began to investigate the case including the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

The shocking news and guilty pleas has motivated farm worker groups to continue fighting for their rights. Plus it prompted lawmakers and news agencies to advocate for immigration reform that would include better wages and working conditions and laws that protect workers with or without papers.

Leaders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a farm worker advocacy group, helped crack the case and has played a prominent role in assisting federal civil rights officials prosecute at least five previous slavery cases since 1997, freeing more than 1,000 workers.

Gerardo Reyes, leader with CIW, said in a statement, “The facts that have been reported in this case are beyond outrage — workers being beaten, tied to posts, and chained and locked into trucks to prevent them from leaving their boss. How many more workers have to be held against their will before the food industry steps up to the plate and demands that this never — ever — occurs again?”

Florida’s leading lawmakers including Republicans Gov. Charlie Crist and former Gov. Jeb Bush have shown little interest or no support at all on this or previous worker-abuse cases. In fact Bush and his emissary publically criticized CIW for its work.

However, the Ft. Meyers-based The News-Press editorialized, in the wake of the Navarette scandal, for comprehensive immigration reform, “including a path to legal residency and citizenship for certain workers.”

The editorial called it a “necessary” measure “to bring this shameful plague to an end.”

The editorial went further to expose the agribusiness industry. So long as agriculture relies on undocumented labor, it said, “a culture of human exploitation and disrespect for the law will prevail, so we can eat slightly cheaper food and certain people can pocket extra profit. Disrespect for human beings is in the DNA of the current system. Respect demands that we legalize the foreign labor we clearly need to harvest our crops.”

Most agricultural workers in Florida work seasonally between December and May. The state grows nearly the entire crop of fresh tomatoes that are bought by restaurants and supermarkets throughout the country. CIW has worked with farm workers to demand and win an increase of one penny per pound of tomatoes to increase the workers wages and better their health and safety conditions.

Farm workers are excluded from the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, and in Florida do not have the right to organize and collectively bargain with their employers.

plozano@pww.org

Ohio labor: 'Obama will be a great president'

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:15:00 +0000

CLEVELAND — Fired up by three days of powerful and rousing speeches, 1,000 delegates and guests at the Ohio AFL-CIO 26th biennial convention here fanned out to the far corners of the state to campaign for the presidential ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

'The entire world is watching Ohio,' Joe Rugola, state federation president, told the gathering in his opening address Sept. 9, referring to the decisive role the state played in the controversial 2004 presidential election and its pivotal role this year.

The stakes could not be higher, he said, noting the convention marked the 50th anniversary of the merger of the AFL and CIO in 1958, when the two labor federations united and defeated an attempt by state Republicans to enact a union-busting 'right to work' measure.

'Let us fight now for the election of Barack Obama,' Rugola said. 'It is a fight for the future existence of the labor movement, a fight to preserve 50 more years of democracy in America.'

The same urgency was hammered by top state government officials and national labor leaders every day of the convention. They included Gov. Ted Strickland and the state’s lieutenant governor, secretary of state and treasurer as well as AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka, Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy and UAW Region 2B Director Lloyd Mahaffey.

All focused on the fact that the AFL-CIO through its active members, retirees, their families and the members of Working America, the labor group’s community affiliate, has the ability to reach 2.1 million voters out of a total of 5.8 million who take part in presidential elections in Ohio.

Many made passionate appeals to confront racism as the main obstacle to winning white workers to vote for Obama, the first African-American major party candidate for president.

'We cannot allow silence on this question to overtake us and prevent the election of Barack Obama,' Rugola said. 'We cannot leave doubt in the mind of even one person that Barack Obama will not only be our president, but he will be a great president.'

'Obama is a great candidate,' said Rich Trumka. 'He voted with labor 98 percent of the time. He voted for the Employee Free Choice Act and has walked picket lines. He is one of us.

'There are a thousand good reasons to elect Barack Obama and only one really, really bad reason to vote against him and that is the color of his skin.'

Trumka said racism is a corporate tool to divide workers.

'We can’t let stupid bigoted wisecracks go unchallenged,' he said. 'We can’t ignore the claim that the United States is not ready for a Black president. We need to make it personal. We need to confront every expression of bigotry and prejudice.'

Trumka blasted Republican John McCain’s anti-labor stands on trade and union contracts, his opposition to veterans’ benefits and his 'catering to right-wing extremists' in his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

'Palin lied through her teeth about Barack Obama’s record,' Trumka said. 'If this is who McCain picks for his vice president, just imagine who he would pick for secretary of labor, the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) and the judges on the Supreme Court.

'A union member voting for John McCain is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.'

Charging that McCain is 'weak, pliable and dishonest,' Leo Gerard labeled him a 'double-talking hypocrite and liar.'

'I’m sick and tired of hearing about his war record,' Gerard said. 'Being shot down and held as a prisoner does not qualify you for everything.'

McCain is 'repackaging himself as an agent of change,' Gerard said. But McCain 'got us into war, which has squandered thousands and thousands of lives, maimed and injured many more, and voted against giving veterans better medical attention.'

Since mid-2007, Gerard said, McCain has voted 100 percent of the time with President Bush and 'supported every attempt to privatize Social Security, reduce benefits and raise the retirement age. He’s for socialism for the rich and Rambo capitalism for the rest of us.'

Gerard said the labor movement must deliver 65 to 75 percent of union households to carry Ohio for Obama.

'If we don’t win Ohio, it’s all over,' he said. 'We can’t let the future of this country be determined by a bunch of closet racists.'

Obama helps recover workers pensions

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 06:01:00 +0000

NEW PHILADELPHIA, Ohio — When steelworkers George Korcedes and Paul Santilli attended the event for Barark Obama here, they hoped that Obama would touch on the struggle for pensions that steelworkers and others are having. They never expected what they got.

Korcedes is a member of a Steelworkers local at Stark Ceramics, in nearby Canton, Ohio, where plant management had pocketed workers’ health care premiums, child care and 401k contributions and had attempted to steal workers’ pensions.

USW had mounted a fight and the state Attorney General was investigating the company for fraud. However, in the case of the pensions, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) had supposedly taken over the pension plan, with the goal of distributing the monies due to the workers. This is what they’d heard, but it had been over two years and nobody at the PBGC would confirm this or give anyone any time frames.

So, Korcedes and Santilli hoped to be able to at least bring this issue up. They did, and how!

“Obama really hammered them on the need for health care for everyone and on how we needed to change the bankruptcy laws to put workers first, not last, like we are now,” Santilli said.

During the Q & A period, Korcedes rose and spoke about his pension, and how nobody would even get him an answer to his questions. He spoke on the terrible injustice in how workers are treated by this economy.

“That’s horrible, and it’s exactly what we’re talking about here today,” Obama replied. “These are decent people, who follow the rules, work hard, and then get treated in this manner. This must end!”

Both guys were happy that they’d addressed the issue and felt like they’d done their job.

Imagine their surprise when, no more than 10 minutes after arriving back home, the phone rang, and it was the PBGC. “We just wanted you to know that we’re working on your pension, and we’ll be able get it to you very soon,” they said.

“It was almost panicy,” according to Santilli. “They were literally falling all over themselves trying to sound friendly, like they had actually been doing something up till then!”

Obama’s rally, meanwhile, was a great success. Over 250 folks in this rural, working-class area of Ohio attended.

“I’m really glad that the PBGC got back to me, finally,” said Korcedes, “but we’re not going to be able to really get this stuff addressed until we elect Obama and kick the Republicans out of office!”

The front page of the next day’s Canton Repository had a big picture of Korcedes and Obama shaking hands.

Who are they trying to kid?

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 05:29:00 +0000

John McCain, while publicly distancing himself from President Bush, has presented an economic program that is a continuation of Bush’s policies. So an assessment of the administration’s record is in order.

In his Aug. 30 radio address, Bush cited recent statistics to show the economy is “beginning to improve.” It put me in mind of a Scottish protest song from the 1950s (roughly translated):

They say we have never had it so good

But who in the hell are they trying to kid?

Bush cited a respectable 3.3 percent rate of growth from April through June, along with an increase in durable goods orders. But these indicators were both helped by the one-time stimulus checks, and were probably boosted by the usual election-year surge in government spending, particularly military orders. Neither effect is likely to last.

Bush also cited a leveling off of home sales. The situation may be getting worse a little more slowly. But in July, foreclosure proceedings were started on 197,000 homes — a new record. More “good” mortgages are now being affected than sub-prime loans. This financial hurricane that is destroying up to 2 million homes each year shows no sign of abating.

Whether you look at families’ living standards, or the economy as a whole, the prospects are worse than they have been for at least a generation.

Family living standards

In August, the Census Bureau issued figures on household income for 2007, the sixth, and almost certainly the last, year of an economic expansion. Analyzing those figures, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found that, compared with the previous peak year of 2000:

• income for a typical (median) working-age household fell by $2,000,

• poverty and child poverty rates increased,

• Americans without health insurance increased from 39.8 million (2001) to 45.7 million.

Keep in mind that 2007 should have been a “good” year. In 2008, jobs have been lost every month, and the official unemployment rate has shot up to 6.1 percent. Using a more realistic measure, unemployment is at 10.7 percent. Hard times extend from young people who are finding it harder to get jobs, or to get college loans, to seniors who are filing for bankruptcy in record numbers. Prices, led by food, gas and heating oil, are outpacing wages. Millions of families are working multiple jobs in a desperate and often unsuccessful effort to save their homes.

The overall picture

You can still find economists — and headlines to match — saying there is no recession, or the recession will be mild and the economy will turn around in a few months. I don’t think so, and here are some of the reasons.

• The latest rescue of the bondholders and investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is unlikely to solve the problem. Working families are trapped with unpayable levels of credit card, mortgage, education and medical debt. Without a rescue plan for these families, the financial crisis will continue.

• State and local governments, facing budget shortfalls, are cutting back on jobs and spending.

• The continuing collapse of the private pension and health systems are further squeezing working families, businesses and governments.

• Years of squandering the nation’s wealth on unproductive investment, prisons and war have left the U.S. with inadequate physical infrastructure (rail, bridges, levees, energy, water), inadequate social infrastructure (education, public health) and a weakened manufacturing sector.

• The vast military budget and foreign military commitments are a drag on the rest of the economy.

Policy makes a difference

The next president will face an economy with deep structural problems, weakened by eight years of misrule. We know how John McCain would respond. Like Bush, he will maintain corporate profits and private wealth at the expense of the environment and of living standards of workers in the United States. He will increase military adventures (and expenses, and lives lost) to maintain multinational corporate power abroad.

Barack Obama has explicitly rejected the Republican “ownership society,” which leaves each individual “on their own” to confront employers, insurance companies and social decay. Obama has pledged to provide health care, to support good jobs at union wages, to rebuild the infrastructure and to invest in renewable energy. There will be many times when the effort to fulfill these promises will run into furious opposition from corporate interests and the investor class. The outcome will depend, in large part, on how well organized the progressive forces are and the extent to which the election results for Congress as well as president are seen as a clear rejection of the right-wing Republican corporate agenda.

econ4ppl@cpusa.org

Labor says enough to GOP sideshows

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 05:15:00 +0000

‘It’s not guns, gays and Palin — it’s the survival of U.S. workers’‘

A united labor movement this week fired several shots aimed at drawing attention to real election issues that the Republicans want to bury with flimflam.

The first shot was fired by the 700,000-member Machinists union at its convention in Florida, Sept. 8, when it delivered an unequivocal endorsement of Barack Obama following a strong appeal by Hillary Clinton.

“This union is not half-hearted with its endorsements,” said IAM President Tom Buffenbarger, who was an early and vocal supporter of Clinton throughout the primaries. “When we go in, we go all in. We will have boots on the ground in every state to make sure our members understand that Barack Obama is the best chance in a generation to reclaim the American Dream for working families.”

The IAM endorsement of Obama is significant, observers note, because it showed the Machinist delegates were not diverted by the weeklong Republican/media barrage of spin. Nor were they sold by the GOP efforts to appeal to “Reagan Democrats” on the basis of “wedge” issues rather than the economic ones that workers want something done about. The Republicans would have considered it a great victory had they been able to keep a major industrial union out of Obama’s camp.

The IAM endorsement is significant on a practical level because many of its members vote in the key industrial states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. McCain has appeared in all of these states and the GOP is using his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate to try to deflect attention from the real issues related to the economy and the war in Iraq.

A second shot was fired by Gerald McEntee, political action director of the 10-million-member AFL-CIO, when he said the following day that “the labor movement understands that the Republicans continue to use everything they can — first it was guns and gays, now it’s all the attention on Sarah Palin — to divert the people from the fight ahead.

“We are staying focused,” he told the World in a phone interview. “This latest action by the Machinists gives us a historic first — a united labor movement with everyone on board to elect Obama. It is no exaggeration to say we are now united fully and we have the best grassroots operation in our history. We are out there telling our members that the issues are jobs, trade policies that work for our people, peace, and the right to organize unions.”

McEntee, who is also president of the 1.4-million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), said he was confident that labor could reach people with the message that “McCain voted 90 percent with George Bush. All of us united, the AFL-CIO, Change to Win, the unaffiliated unions and all the community and other groups we work with, are out there with the only message that counts — Obama has a 100 percent record as far as the people of this country are concerned.”

At the Machinists convention, the more than 2,600 delegates rose to their feet repeatedly during Clinton’s remarks. They stood, roaring approval and applauding for several minutes, when Clinton asked that they support Obama’s bid to beome president of the United States.

The enthusiastic delegates represented workers in the airline, aerospace, manufacturing, railroad, woodworking and shipbuilding industries.

Mark Ayers, president of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department, is another labor leader who represents workers whom the Republicans would like to win over to McCain.

Ayers supports Obama and has said he backs Obama’s plan for creation of jobs that can’t be outsourced. At a Sept. 9 press conference, Ayers declared, “Clearly, the most obvious way of dealing with a recession and unemployment is to invest in the building and repairing of our nation’s infrastructure. Such spending puts money in the pockets of working people.” He added, “These are jobs you can’t outsource.”

jwojcik@pww.org

Workers continue Boeing shutdown, job security key issue

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:45:00 +0000

Boeing workers are prepared for a long strike to prevent their jobs from being outsourced as their shutdown of the nation’s largest airplane maker enters its fourth day.

Mark Blondin, the chief negotiator for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), said, “This time around, the workforce is angry enough at Boeing that they have told us they’re willing to stay out until 2009.”

Twenty-seven thousand airplane assembly workers in Washington State, Oregon and Kansas, walked off the job last Saturday after last-minute attempts by the union to reach agreement failed. 87 percent of the workforce had voted to strike.

Union leaders say that job security is the key issue, followed by wages and health care. Boeing, since 1995, has pursued a policy of hiring outside contractors in other countries to make more and more parts for its air planes.

IAM President Tom Buffenbarger said the question of job security is critical to workers. He said, “It’s time for Boeing to listen to us on this. The union just wants to be able to have a shot at making the case that our workers can do these jobs competitively before Boeing ships them out.”

Workers on the picket lines say that Boeing’s current 787 Dreamliner program is a prime example of problems resulting from the company’s attempt to outsource union jobs. The company is using outfits in Japan and Italy, among other places, to construct much of the new fuel-efficient jetliner. A union source said that when the first shipments from these countries arrived at the Boeing plant in Everett, Wash. thousands of important parts were missing. The company was then forced to ask its union workers to scramble to fix the problem so it could assemble its first few planes. The workers got the job done.

The outsoucing scheme eventually backfired, however, as the overseas companies to which Boeing had turned to do things on the cheap fell behind in their deliveries. The result is that the entire 787 program is now more than a year behind schedule.

“If Boeing had let us build that airplane in the first place, it would be in service today,” Dale Flinn, a 20-year veteran on Boeing’s 767 assembly line, told the press.

Leaders of IAM District 751 in Washington state told workers in a statement on its website that it was their strong strike vote that triggered Boeing’s request to return to the table for two extra days when the contract expired last week, “and that same strike vote will bring them back to the table at a later date. Strikes are the last resort when companies such as Boeing do not respect the workforce. Boeing lost respect, and this is one way to prove them that they need to respect you as an important ingredient to the success of this company they have been put in charge of.”

The cruelty of modern-day slavery in U.S. farm fields

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:28:00 +0000

In a dehumanizing federal case, five members of the same family in Immokalee Fla. pleaded guilty Sept. 2 to enslaving Mexican and Guatemalan farmworkers for more than two years. Slavery in the U.S. has been banned for more than 130 years.

In a 17-count indictment, members of the Navarette family exploited more than a dozen men, brutalizing and abusing them during captivity as the workers were forced to sleep in boxes, shacks and trucks on the family’s property. The family scheme, which operated for private financial gain, enslaved immigrant workers in North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida farm fields.

Workers were told they would earn a minimal wage but were driven into ever-increasing debt by the Navarette family who chained, beat and threatened physical abuse on the workers if they tried to leave. Each worker was charged for his meal and shower and they were told to urinate and defecate in outside corners near their sleeping areas. According to the indictment, they were never paid.

Last January several of the workers escaped from a ventilation hatch in a locked box truck in Immokalee and managed to find their way to the local authorities. Soon after their horror stories were revealed, federal agencies began to investigate the case including the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

The shocking news and guilty pleas has motivated farmworker groups to continue fighting for their rights, prompting lawmakers and news agencies in support of immigration reform that includes better wages and working conditions and new laws that protect workers with or without papers.

Leaders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a farmworker advocacy group, helped crack the case and has played a prominent role in assisting federal civil rights officials prosecute at least five previous slave cases since 1997 freeing more than 1,000 workers.

In a statement, Gerardo Reyes, leader with CIW said, “The facts that have been reported in this case are beyond outrage – workers being beaten, tied to posts, and chained and locked into trucks to prevent them from leaving their boss. How many more workers have to be held against their will before the food industry steps up to the plate and demands that this never – ever – occurs again in the produce that ends up on America’s tables?”

After a federal plea deal was made Cesar and Geovanni Navarette, the two main ringleaders of the slave operation will likely serve 12 years in prison and pay fines from 750,000 to $1 million each. Their official sentencing, which includes three other people, is expected at the end of the year.

The News-Press in a recent editorial congratulated Chief Assistant Attorney Doug Molloy and other anti-slavery crusaders for their work on the case. News-Press is urging Molloy and other farmworker advocates to “carry on this work against all forms of slavery and human trafficking.”

The editorial adds, “Comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to legal residency and citizenship for certain workers, is also necessary to bring this shameful plague to an end.” So long as agriculture relies on undocumented labor, “a culture of human exploitation and disrespect for the law will prevail, so we can eat slightly cheaper food and certain people can pocket extra profit. Disrespect for human beings is in the DNA of the current system. Respect demands that we legalize the foreign labor we clearly need to harvest our crops,” said News-Press.

In a statement Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said, “While slavery is, of course, the most extreme situation in the tomato fields, the truth is that the average worker there is being ruthlessly exploited. Tomato pickers perform backbreaking work, make very low wages, have no benefits and virtually no labor protections.” Sanders is a member of the Senate Labor Committee as well as the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee and plans to introduce legislation which will end a loophole in current law which enables growers to avoid taking responsibility for what happens on their fields when workers are being enslaved.

Most agricultural workers in Florida work during the peek season between each December and May. The state grows nearly the entire crop of fresh tomatoes that are bought by restaurants and supermarkets throughout the country. To say the least, most tomato workers in Florida who harvest the crop are almost entirely mistreated and exploited in many instances, critics say.

Historically farmworkers have been and continue to be excluded from U.S. fair labor standards and are prevented from unionizing. Most farm owners hire contractors, or crew bosses, to hire, pay, provide shelter for, and transportation of workers, which allows actual growers off the hook and free from any wrongdoing.

Florida’s leading lawmakers including Republicans Gov. Charlie Crist and former Gov. Jeb Bush and certain communities throughout the state have shown little interest or no support at all on this or previous worker-abuse cases. In fact former Gov. Bush and his emissary openly criticized CIW for its work.

In the last three years CIW has won groundbreaking agreements in support of tomato workers with several fast-food chains – Yum Brands, McDonald’s and Burger King to pay a penny more per pound to workers harvesting the crop. Most recently CIW and its allies have won the support of Whole Foods who have agreed to similar terms. But the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange continues to dismiss the agreements and refuses to abide by them. Nevertheless, CIW feels changing the way business is done is crucial to eradicating modern-day slavery cases and overall worker injustice in the fields.

Agriprocessors Inc. faces union fight in Brooklyn warehouse

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:39:00 +0000

The Forward, America’s most influential Jewish newspaper, is running a story on immigration and labor issues at the Agriprocessors Brooklyn plant that reveals the Rubaskins likely were knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. In addition, a case involving union organization at the plant is being petitioned to the Supreme Court.

The story by Nathaniel Popper, who has been covering this story since the Forward broke it back in 2006, indicates additional mistreatment of workers at another facility besides the Postville IA plant which was the site of the largest immigration raid ever.

At the farthest end of the Brooklyn Wholesale Meat Market, just past Chow Trading Co. and Lancaster Quality Pork, an inconspicuous black-and-white sign marks the presence of a very conspicuous tenant.

The building houses the local warehouse for Agriprocessors, the largest kosher meat producer in the country. Agriprocessors is best known for its slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, which was raided in May in what authorities have called the largest single immigration raid ever. The raid has been followed by intense scrutiny of the way Agriprocessors treated the nearly 400 undocumented immigrants who were arrested.

But Agriprocessors’ legal collision with immigrants began long before the raid, here in Brooklyn, where dozens of workers move palettes of meat between refrigerated rooms and trucks that take the beef and poultry to stores and restaurants around New York. The company has been locked in legal battles for the past three years over its immigrant workers, who wanted to unionize the warehouse because of what they described as mistreatment.

“We were treated like garbage,” Joel Garcia, a former truck driver at the Brooklyn warehouse, told the Forward. “We were doing a lot of work for not a lot of money. And if we said anything, we got fired immediately.”

Workers at the warehouse eventually voted in September 2005 to join the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which has also been involved in a scrappy battle to represent the workers at Agriprocessors’ Iowa slaughterhouse. After the election in Brooklyn, the company came back with an unusual argument. Lawyers for Agriprocessors said that the company had determined that 17 of the 21 workers who had voted were undocumented immigrants. Their status had not been brought up before, but after the union vote the company said that the immigrants were not eligible for employment, much less union membership. The workers went on strike and were soon replaced.

Since then, three rounds of judges have ruled that Agriprocessors must recognize the union, pointing to a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court decision that granted undocumented immigrants protection under the National Labor Relations Act. The company has appealed these decisions, and at the end of June, lawyers for Agriprocessors petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. The company’s petition argues that “if the votes of illegal workers are counted in union elections, unions may have an incentive to encourage illegal aliens to conceal their undocumented status.”

Experts in labor law say that the Agriprocessors case is not likely to be heard by the Supreme Court, due to the 1984 ruling, but the case has already succeeded in maintaining the status quo at the Brooklyn warehouse for three years.

“Every day that goes by is one day less that they have to negotiate” for a contract, said Alvin Blyer, regional director of the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency that has overseen the Agriprocessors’ case. “This delay is certainly very financially beneficial.”

Beyond the legal issues, the situation in Brooklyn opens a window into the way Agriprocessors has treated workers outside its flagship Iowa slaughterhouse, and suggests that the complaints about working conditions that have arisen in Iowa were not isolated.

The situation at the Brooklyn plant also answers questions that have gone unanswered in Iowa. Most notably, it is unclear if the company knowingly employed undocumented workers, such as those who were arrested during the raid in Iowa. The company has pleaded ignorance. But the Brooklyn case suggests that long before the raid in Iowa, the company knew it had undocumented workers in its ranks and knew how to find them --when it was to the company’s benefit. Immigrant advocates say that the Brooklyn plant paints a clear picture of what this has meant for immigrant workers.

“You are employing and taking advantage of the workers’ vulnerable status, and then when they try to assert their rights, then you use that immigration status that allowed you to exploit them to prevent them from using the courts and fighting for their rights,” said Nora Preciado, an attorney at the National Immigration Law Center.

The company declined to answer questions about specific conditions at the warehouse. The brown-brick meat market in Brooklyn also houses two other kosher meat distributors, Eastern Meats and International Glatt Kosher Meats. Both of these companies have a unionized work force that has health care benefits, paid sick time and a starting salary above the minimum wage. “Every job has its downside,” said Dave Young, regional organizing director for United Food and Commercial Workers. “But for the most part, International is a decent place to work. The workers have been there for years. It doesn’t have to be like it is at Agri.”

************

The Brooklyn warehouse was opened in the 1990s by the Rubashkin family, which owns Agriprocessors. According to people who have been inside the warehouse, in the Sunset Park neighborhood, it is divided between freezer rooms and refrigerated rooms containing the many brands of Agriprocessors meat, which include Rubashkin’s, Aaron’s Best and Iowa Best Beef. The UFCW collected information indicating that between 30 and 40 people work at the site, most of them either truck drivers or meat packers.

Overseeing the operation from the second-floor offices is Joseph Rubashkin, a son of the octogenarian butcher who started Agriprocessors, Aaron Rubashkin.

A reporter visiting the plant recently was directed to speak with Shalom Minkowitz, who was described as the warehouse manager. In a telephone conversation, Minkowitz said he would not speak about the situation at the plant. “I think that our attorney can answer any questions,” Minkowitz said.

Nathan Lewin, who is representing Agriprocessors before the Supreme Court, said: “The Supreme Court petition speaks for itself. As to anything else, you’ll have to rely on the record in the case.”

Outside the warehouse, at around 8:30 on a recent morning, three men who spoke Spanish sat near the main door. They said they worked for Agriprocessors, but they declined to answer questions about the company. Another man, who identified himself as a truck driver, declined to give his name and offered an explanation for the silence: “Nobody wants to lose their job, and if they talk about it they are definitely going to lose their job.”

A clearer picture of life inside the plant arises from conversations with people who know the company and from documents surrounding the court case. The basic grievances were summed up in a flier handed out during the strike.

“We cannot work any longer for 55 hours a week at straight time, with no benefits, and abusive treatment by our boss,” the flier said. Pay stub information compiled by the union suggest that in late 2005, workers were being paid $6.50 or $7 an hour with no benefits. At the time, the minimum wage in New York State was $6 an hour. It is now $7.15.

Organizers for the UFCW, showed up in 2005 and began talking to the workers. Employees from that time told the Forward that managers quickly tried to stop them from interacting with the union representatives.

“I heard that whoever would sign the papers would get fired; that’s when I moved to get another job,” Garcia said.

The UFCW is the same national union that has been pushing to organize the Agriprocessors plant in Iowa. There, the slaughterhouse manager, Sholom Rubashkin, sent a memo to workers, discouraging them from speaking with the union.

“If a union organizer keeps bothering you, JUST SAY NO!” said one memo, dated October 6, 2005.

In Iowa, the workers never reached a vote, but in Brooklyn the staff held an election in the warehouse locker room the morning of September 23, 2005. Fifteen employees went for the union, five went against it and one vote was contested.

The company had a number of different responses to the vote. In the week immediately after the election, workers reported that they were pressured to sign cards for another union — one that has a reputation in New York circles for being brought in by management to organize workers in a way that is beneficial to management. During the strike, fliers from the workers complained about this tactic: “The owner is mad that the workers have chosen to be represented by a REAL union, instead of the fake union the owner picked out and believes he can control.”

The NLRB struck down this other union, but complaints continued. A few weeks after the election, the union filed a complaint that the company had fired the employee who had been the union’s election observer.

When the company declined to open negotiations for a contract, the workers decided to go on strike at the end of October. Each day, for almost three months, close to a dozen workers marched in the parking lot behind the meat market. An affidavit submitted by a meat packer to the NLRB explained the willingness to strike.

“I decided to go on strike because I wanted a contract with more time for lunch, overtime pay and proper clothing for working in the freezer,” said the affidavit from the meat packer, an undocumented worker.

It was in the middle of the strike that the company first made its legal objection to the immigration status of its workers. According to the company’s Supreme Court petition, Agriprocessors had run the Social Security numbers of all the employees through a government Web site and “discovered that of the 21 workers who voted in the election, the Social Security numbers of only four matched Social Security records with the same name.”

At a hearing before an NLRB judge, Agriprocessors lawyer Richard Howard said that due to federal laws that bar an employer from hiring undocumented immigrants, “it just kind of makes sense logically that if you can’t work for this employer, you shouldn’t be a member of the bargaining unit for this employer.”

The lawyer for the union, Emily Desa, questioned the timing of Agriprocessors’ discovery.

“Here, Respondent is grasping at anything to deny employees the right to representation,” Desa said in the hearing. “Respondent came up with this defense after it tried everything else and the Union was certified.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has dealt with the rights of undocumented immigrants in two high-profile cases, known as Hoffman and Sure-Tan. In the 1984 Sure-Tan case, the court ruled that such immigrants “plainly come within the broad statutory definition of ‘employee,’” and thus are protected by the National Labor Relations Act.

Citing this language, first an administrative judge, then the NLRB and, most recently, the United States Court of Appeals in Washington have all ruled against the company. The decision by the circuit court used derisive language.

“Remarkably, Agri Processor’s brief neither acknowledges this controlling language in Sure-Tan nor even quotes the NLRA’s definition of ‘employee,’” said the decision, which came down in January of this year.

One judge on the appeals court did dissent, siding with Agriprocessors, and the company’s lawyers have pointed to that dissent in asking the Supreme Court to overturn its previous ruling.

“The Court should reconsider the central legal issue and interpret the National Labor Relations Act in light of today’s laws and today’s public policies,” the brief said.

**********

In Postville, since the May raid, the company has not gone through this legal wrangling. Instead, company spokesmen have simply said that the company did not know it was employing undocumented immigrants.

This contention has come under fire from people who were involved with the workers at the Brooklyn plant. Young said that after the workers went on strike, he saw Agriprocessors picking up new employees at a nearby corner in Sunset Park where Hispanic day-laborers waited for work. In one case, after Agriprocessors had accused its employees of being undocumented immigrants, Young said he saw the company bring to work a relative of one of the undocumented immigrant strikers, whom the striker told him was also undocumented.

“They knew that they had illegals and that was their chance,” Young told the Forward. “They could have cleaned up Postville, too, but they didn’t.”

While the workers who voted in 2005 have been replaced, Young said that his union would represent any workers who are in place when the company begins to negotiate. On May 28, the NLRB wrote the company a letter noting that “the case remains open for all purposes as awaiting compliance.”

Thousands take back Labor Day at festival during GOP convention

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:18:00 +0000

ST. PAUL, Minn. (PAI)--Many of the thousands of young people gathered at Harriet Island in the Mississippi River in St. Paul, Minn., on Sept. 1 probably never heard of folk musician Woody Guthrie or labor organizer Joe Hill, but they cheered when musicians Steve Earle and Tom Morello evoked the memories of these labor icons at the 'Take Back Labor Day' Festival there during the GOP convention.

And thousands also joined in singing 'This Land Is Your Land,' the worker's anthem penned by Guthrie, when led by Morello, also known as 'The Nightwatchman' and a member of the group, Rage Against the Machine.

The festival, run by the Service Employees, featured hip hop, rap and rock artists including Atmosphere, Mos Def and The Pharcyde--with a dose of politics thrown in.

British rocker Billy Bragg told the crowd that people around the world are waiting for the United States 'to lead again' and he urged Americans to vote for change in November. 'I have faith in you,' Bragg told the crowd, many of whom came to the festival after participating in an antiwar march.

In addition to the music, SEIU staffed booths with information on the labor movement and the Employee Free Choice Act, federal legislation to make it easier for workers to exercise their right to join unions.

The Labor Day festival was held to coincide with the Republican National Convention in downtown St. Paul, SEIU President Andy Stern said in an interview. SEIU also sponsored a rally and concert during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, to highlight the need for affordable, universal health care.

Its time for Doctor Obama

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:34:00 +0000

CHICAGO – The 45-foot long, 28-ton, clean bio-diesel powered museum on wheels known as the “Bush Legacy Bus” is making a cross-country tour and made a downtown stop here during a Sept. 8th rally led by local labor and community leaders.

Speakers at the rally reflected on the last eight years under President Bush and how his anti-worker policies have affected Illinois families and communities. They charged working families cannot afford four more years of the same with GOP nominee John McCain, who was attending a fundraiser down the street.

Mike Yauger, president of Teamsters Local 786 and decorated Vietnam combat veteran, spoke at the rally.

“We’re here to support Barack Obama and to speak on the issues facing working families especially the failing American dream and the failed policies of Bush and McCain,” Yauger told the World.

“Republicans raise the question, ‘Is America ready for a Black president?’ Well working families across America on Election Day will be casting their vote for Barack Obama, not because he is Black. They’ll be voting for Obama because what America needs most is a good president,” he said.

Yauger added that McCain is out of touch with working families especially when he says the net worth of middle-class Americans is $2.5 million. Families have to worry about affording their children’s college education, or sending them off to Iraq, or see them return as veterans when the unemployment rate is over six percent, said Yauger. The unemployment rate for veterans is over 13 percent, he noted.

Yauger is the union coordinator for the Helmets to Hardhats program, which assists returning veterans with career opportunities. Through the program more than 700 Illinois veterans have been assisted since August of 2007.

“Working people toss and turn at night and can’t sleep because they are worried about getting sick with no health insurance or losing their homes, and McCain has six of them,” said Yauger. “They worry because they can’t afford to be sick and they work more for less.”

Yauger said that Bush wants to destroy the rights of workers, and McCain is no better.

“If you break your leg eight years ago but you still walk with a limp and have pain today, then you’re stuck with two choices,” said Yauger. “You either learn to live with it or get a new doctor. Come November it’s going to be un-painfully clear that it’s time for Doctor Obama,” he said.

The Bush Legacy Tour kicked off in Washington D.C. last June and is traveling coast-to-coast, making nearly 150 stops throughout the nation to spotlight McCain’s record of rubberstamping President Bush’s failed policies 90 percent of the time, organizers say.

The tour is being led by Americans United for Change, a progressive issue-based advocacy group best known for defeating Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security in 2005. The bus features interactive exhibits on what organizers say highlight two terms of failed conservative policies led by the Bush administration and McCain.

According to the tour organizers, both Bush and McCain continue to ignore a crumbling economy on an imminent path toward recession, millions without health insurance, and an endless and mismanaged war in Iraq that has stretched the U.S. military to the breaking point as thousands each day continue to lose their jobs, their homes and their dignity.

Organizers at the rally say they want to call attention to McCain’s commitment to “staying the course” with Bush’s failed policies that have made Americans less safe, ruined the economy, threatened Social Security and shortchanged major U.S. national priorities here at home.

Other speakers at the rally included John Cameron, political director with Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, William McNary, executive director of Illinois Citizen Action, and Julie Blust with Americans United for Change.

The tour made appearances at both the Democratic and Republican conventions and will continue traveling through the fall, making stops at many of the hometown offices of GOP congressional leaders. The tour also plans on visiting New Orleans and Crawford, TX. For more information on the tour visit or www.americansunitedforchange.org.

Machinists endorse Obama for president

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:00:00 +0000

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla., -- The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) today delivered a full-throated endorsement for Barack Obama following a personal appeal from New York Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton at the union's national convention in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

'This union is not half-hearted with its endorsements,' said IAM International President Tom Buffenbarger, who was an early and strong supporter of Sen. Clinton throughout the primaries. 'When we go in, we go all in. We will have boots on the ground in every state to make sure our members understand that Barack Obama is the best chance in a generation to reclaim the American Dream for working families.'

More than 2,600 delegates and guests rose to their feet repeatedly during Clinton's remarks and displayed unequivocal support for her request to support the Illinois senator to become the next president of the United States.

The endorsement will trigger a massive education campaign among IAM members and extensive publicity in union publications and worksites nationwide. The IAM is a significant political presence in key industrial states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The IAM is among the nation's largest industrial trade unions, representing over 700,000 active and retired members in airline, aerospace, manufacturing, railroad, woodworking and shipbuilding industries.

For more information, go to http://www.goiam.org.

Growing jobless figures impact presidential race

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 02:20:00 +0000

The official jobless rate topped 6.1 percent in August bringing the plight of U.S. workers into the center of the political arena as the presidential campaign enters its final eight weeks.

84,000 workers lost their jobs last month according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 605,000 jobs have been lost since January.

Those who really swelled the unemployment rolls last month were adults, mostly over the age of 45. The 600,000 new jobless include almost as many college graduates as those with only high school diplomas.

Campaigning this weekend in Pennsylvania and Ohio, Barack Obama slammed McCain and the Republican Party for staging a convention last week that did nothing to address the needs of a nation struggling with high unemployment, a mortgage crisis and a host of other economic problems.

“If you watched the Republican national convention you wouldn't know that we have the highest unemployment in five years because they didn't say a thing about what is going on with the middle class,” Obama told workers at a specialty glass factory near Scranton, Penn.

McCain, campaigning in Wisconsin, another battleground state, said that the failing economy has squeezed everyone in the country.

“My friends, a little straight talk, a little straight talk,” McCain said. “These are tough times. The jobs report is another reminder these are tough times. These are tough times in Wisconsin, tough times in Ohio, tough times all over America.”

He did not, however, say anything about a plan to make the times any less tough.

McCain, who has been in the Senate for 22 years, has supported the Bush administration economic program for the last eight years. He backs the Bush tax cut of hundreds of billion of dollars for the rich and the costly war in Iraq.

Unlike during his campaign stump speeches which include no discussion of any specific policy issues McCain, during his speech at the Republican convention, did put forward a few issues. On all of them, however, he was either misleading or, in some cases, putting forward outright lies.

During that speech he claimed he is for lower taxes and that Obama wants higher taxes. The vast majority of families would get a bigger tax break from the Obama plan than from the McCain plan.

McCain said in his convention speech that he will provide relief and training for workers affected by economic change. In the Senate, however, he voted against extending unemployment benefits and offering aid to workers in training programs.

He said he “feels for families” reeling from the foreclosure crisis. The sample “suffering family” he singled out in his speech was a family that lost money on real estate investments, not their home.

He said in his speech that he would give families more choice in the health care system. His plan, however, leaves families at the mercy of private insurance companies whose profit margins depend upon putting up walls between doctors and their patients.

His health care plan would actually create an additional tax on middle class families.

Striking Machinists at Boeing ask: How do you hide $13 billion?

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:16:00 +0000

“How do you hide $13 billion? Do you stuff it in an airplane? Do you give it to the CEO? Or, do you share it with your workers?”

These questions are printed on union flyers being distributed by thousands of striking Boeing workers at locations in Washington state, Oregon and Kansas as the total shutdown of the nation's largest airplane maker entered its second day.

Unprecedented profits now being made by Boeing are fueling the anger of the 27,000 workers who shut down the giant corporation Sept. 6.

Tom Wroblewski, who heads the union's negotiating committee, said that in the last five years Boeing has reported after tax profits of more than $13 billion - an increase of over 828 percent from the prior five year period.

“Yet Boeing continues to offer proposals more fitting of a company in bankruptcy,” he said.

Boeing says it is not in a position to pass along increased pay and benefits costs to customers.

“We agree,” said Wroblewski, “The costs should come out of their increased profits - not be passed along to the airline customer.”

The union says Boeing will come up with many additional excuses as to why it shouldn't share its profits with its workers but that the unprecedented backlogs of unfilled orders from all over the world, together with the record profits, constitute almost a moral imperative that the workers should see some benefit. The union makes no secret of the fact that it considers itself to be in a very strong bargaining position. “They need the workers,” a union source said, “they are hiring workers every day and they still can't fill the back orders.”

It is against that backdrop that workers became particularly angry when the company proposed not increases but cutbacks in benefits when it made its final offer.

Boeing demanded, for example, that a family of three should pay a maximum of $6,000 in out-of-pocket health care costs, up from the current $4,000 maximum. In addition, it proposed slashing of both vision and dental care benefits.

Strike shuts down Boeing Company

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 10:22:00 +0000

27,000 members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) union shut down Boeing, the nation’s largest aircraft maker, Sept. 6 as they formed picket lines at all company facilities in Washington state, Oregon and Kansas.

The strike began after the union, at the request of the governor of Washington and federal mediators, participated in a 48 hour attempt to resolve issues.

“The absence of job security language was the key reason members rejected the final company offer,” said International President Tome Buffenbarger, just minutes after the strike began at 3 a.m. ET. The shutdown is the second major strike at Boeing in three years.

“We’ve learned its not enough to have a good-paying job if the job can disappear at any time,” Buffenbarger said.

The IAM, one of the largest industrial unions in the U.S., represents 700,000 workers in the airline, aerospace, manufacturing, woodworking, and shipbuilding industries.

Shutting down of the nation’s largest aircraft maker potentially amounts to the most serious challenge to big business in the last ten years.

The union says it was necessary because Boeing tried to force workers to accept changes in contract language that would eliminate job security and free the company to sharply increase the amount of work it outsources. The company also sought to increase substantially the out-of-pocket health care costs workers pay, according to the union.

The company also violated contractual rules by trying to circumvent the union and go directly to some workers who have better pay and seniority and make offers to them on the side, according to union sources.

“The details of the company offer are details we can’t live with,” said Connie Kelliher, a union spokeswoman. Kelliher said that workers have told the union “again and again” that even the best pay and benefits are no good if “they are not on the payroll tomorrow.”

Workers voted 80 percent against the company’s final offer and 87 percent in favor of a strike. The strike is delaying delivery of the fuel-efficient 787 Dreamliner jets, which are in strong demand by airlines dealing with the high price of fuel.

The union says Boeing can afford to meet its demands because profits are up and the company is growing due to filling of worldwide orders for new aircraft. A union source said the company is hiring more than 25 workers a day and that this is one of the reasons it is anxious to slash job security.

Although some Boeing workers with seniority make $27 per hour, new workers are hired for less than $9 an hour. The company would like to keep them down at that level, the source said.

Meanwhile, the regularly scheduled IAM convention is opening in Orlando, Fla. with Hillary Clinton expected to speak on Sept. 8. The union is one of the few that has not officially endorsed Barack Obama’s presidential bid. Clinton is expected to urge that endorsement when she speaks to the Machinists.

Did a Mississippi raid protect right-wing politicians?

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:25:00 +0000

Originally posted at

LAUREL, Miss. — On August 25, immigration agents swooped down on Howard Industries, a Mississippi electrical equipment factory, taking 481 workers to a privately-run detention center in Jena, Louisiana. A hundred and six women were also arrested at the plant, and released wearing electronic monitoring devices on their ankles if they had children, or without them if they were pregnant. Eight workers were taken to federal court in Hattiesburg, where they were charged with aggravated identity theft.

Afterwards Barbara Gonzalez, spokesperson for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), stated the raid took place because of a tip by a 'union member' two years before. Other media accounts focused on an incident in which plant workers allegedly cheered as their coworkers were led away by ICE agents. The articles claim the plant was torn by tension between immigrant and non-immigrant workers, and that unions in Mississippi are hostile to immigrants.

Many Mississippi activists and workers, however, charge the raid had a political agenda — undermining a growing political coalition that threatens the state's conservative Republican establishment. They also say the raid, which took place during union contract negotiations, will help the company resist demands for better wages and conditions.

Jim Evans, a national AFL-CIO staff member in Mississippi and a leading member of the state legislature's Black Caucus, said he believed 'this raid is an effort to drive immigrants out of Mississippi. It is also an attempt to drive a wedge between immigrants, African Americans, white people and unions - all those who want political change here.' Patricia Ice, attorney for the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA), agreed that 'this is political. They want a mass exodus of immigrants out of the state, the kind we've seen in Arizona and Oklahoma. The political establishment here is threatened by Mississippi's changing demographics, and what the electorate might look like in 20 years.'

In the last two decades, the percentage of African Americans in the state's population has increased to over 35%, and immigrants, who were statistically insignificant until recently, are expected to reach 10 percent in the next decade. Mississippi union membership has been among the nation's lowest, but since the early 1980s, workers have joined unions in catfish and poultry plants, casinos and shipyards, along with those at Howard Industries.

Evans, other members of the Black Caucus, many of the state's labor organizations, and immigrant communities all see shifting demographics as the basis for changing the state's politics. Over the last seven years their growing coalition has proposed legislation to set up a Department of Labor (Mississippi is the only state without one), guarantee access to education for children of all races and nationalities, and provide drivers' licenses to immigrants. MIRA organized support in the state capitol for those proposals, and Evans, who sponsored many of them, chairs MIRA's board.

Earlier this year, however, the legislature passed, and Gov. Haley Barbour signed, a law making it a state felony for an undocumented worker to hold a job, punishable by 1-5 years in prison and $1,000-10,000 in fines. Employers are given immunity for employing workers without papers, so long as they vet new hires through an ICE database called E-Verify. It is still not known whether the people arrested at Howard Industries will be charged under the new state law. Evans says the law and the raid serve the same objectives. 'They both just make it easier to exploit workers. The people who profit from Mississippi's low wage system want to keep it the way it is,' he alleged.

In the week before the raid, MIRA organizers received reports of a growing number of ICE agents in southern Mississippi. They began leafleting immigrant communities, warning them about a possible raid and explaining their rights should people be questioned about their immigration status. When agents finally showed up at the Howard Industries plant, many workers say they tried to invoke those rights, and warn others that a raid was in progress. One woman, later detained and then released to care for her child, began to call workers who had not yet come to the factory on her cell phone, warning them to stay away. 'She first called her brother, and then began calling anyone else she could think of,' explained her mother, who works in a local chicken plant. Both feared being identified publicly. 'An agent grabbed her arm, and asked her what she was doing, so she went into the bathroom, and kept calling people until they took her phone away.'

Howard Industries, like most Mississippi employers, has a long record of opposing unions. Workers there chose representation by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers on June 8, 2000, by a vote of 162-108. Employment at the plant, which manufactures electrical ballasts and transformers, grew considerably after the election, and the company now employs over 4,000 workers at several locations in Mississippi. In 2002 it received a $31.5 million subsidy for expansion from the state government, and at one point state legislators were all given HI laptop computers. 'The company is very well-connected politically,' says Evans, who noted that its owners donated to the campaigns of former Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, and then to Mississippi's current Republican governor, Haley Barbour.

As it grew, the company hired many immigrant Mexican and Central American workers, diversifying a workforce that was originally primarily African American and white. The company has declined to comment, and released a press statement that said, 'Howard Industries runs every check allowed to ascertain the immigration status of all applicants for jobs. It is company policy that it hires only U.S. citizens and legal immigrants.'

During the organizing drive, the union filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging intimidation and violations of workers' rights. After the union and company agreed on a contract, more charges followed. NLRB Region 15 issued a complaint against the company for violating the union's bargaining rights. Roger Doolittle, attorney for IBEW Local 1317, says other charges allege that the company threatened a union steward for trying to represent workers in the plant. In June, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced it intended to fine the company $123,000 for 36 violations of health and safety regulations at the Pendorf plant, where the raid took place, and another $41,000 in fines for a second Laurel location.

Tension between the company and union increased after the collective bargaining agreement expired at the beginning of August. According to one immigrant worker, who was not detained because he worked on swing shift and who did not want to be identified, the union was asking for a wage increase of $1.50/hour and better vacation benefits. Company medical benefits are also an issue among workers, he said, because family coverage costs over $100/week, putting it out of reach for most employees.

Mississippi is a right-to-work state, and labor contracts cannot require that workers belong to the union. Instead, unions must continually try to sign workers up as members. In past years, according to other union sources, IBEW Local 1317 had a reputation as a union that did not offer much support to its immigrant members.

According to the swing shift worker, who did not belong to the union, there were just a few hundred members at the Pendorf plant, and in negotiations the company used that low membership as a reason not to sign a new agreement.

To increase its ability to negotiate a contract, Local 1317 began making greater efforts to sign up immigrant members. Spanish-speaking organizers were brought in, and they handed out leaflets in Spanish explaining the benefits of membership. They visited workers at home so they could talk about the union without being overheard or seen by company supervisors. According to the swing shift worker, many began to join, especially the immigrants who'd been hired most recently. IBEW's national newspaper, Electrical Worker, reported that over 200 had signed up last April, according to Local 1317's African American business manager Clarence Larkin. 'It's a constant process to keep the union alive and growing,' he told the paper.

That's when the plant was raided. Local 1317 will now have to try to negotiate a contract after the loss of many of its members, who were among those detained. Those members, who joined the union in hopes of better wages and treatment, instead have been imprisoned for days in Jena, La., a two-hour drive from Laurel. ICE spokesperson Barbara Gonzalez would not provide an estimate of how long they might be jailed, but said 'the investigation of their cases is ongoing.'

The day after ICE agents stormed the factory, MIRA began organizing meetings to provide legal advice, food and economic help. According to MIRA Director Bill Chandler, Howard Industry representatives told detainees' families, and women released to care for children, that the company wouldn't give them their paychecks. On Aug. 28, MIRA organizer Vicky Cintra led a group of workers to the Pendorf plant to demand their pay. Managers called Laurel police and sheriffs, who threatened to arrest her. After workers began chanting, 'Let her go!' and news reporters appeared on the scene, the company finally agreed to distribute checks to about 70 people.

The swing shift worker was so frightened by the raid that he hadn't gone back to work after almost a week, and wasn't sure he'd have a job waiting if he did. 'Everyone is still really scared,' he said. Doolittle agreed, and said that fear would affect more than just the workers taken away. 'Workers get apprehensive anytime something like this happens,' he said. 'That's just human nature.'

Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, explained that 'raids drive down wages because they intimidate workers, even citizens and legal residents. The employer brings in another batch of employees and continues business as usual, while people who protest get targeted and workers get deported. Raids really demonstrate the employer's power.' The Hattiesburg American reported Friday that Howard Industries sent a letter to customers two days after the raid, assuring them that production would be back to normal by the end of the week, and noting that the company has not been charged.

Spokesperson Barbara Gonzalez claimed ICE waited two years after receiving a call from a 'union member' before conducting the raid, because 'we took the time needed for our investigation.' She declined to say how that investigation was conducted, or what led ICE to believe their tip had come from a union member. The picture of a plant in which union members were hostile to immigrants was reinforced after the raid by media accounts of an incident in which workers 'applauded' as their coworkers were taken away. But on Aug. 29, when Cintra and the braceleted women sat in front of the plant for a second day, demanding more paychecks, African American workers came up to them as they left work, embraced the women, and told them they supported them.

'It's hard to believe that a two-year old phone call to ICE led to this raid, but whether or not the call ever took place, that possibility is a product of the poisonous atmosphere fostered by politicians of both parties in Mississippi,' says MIRA Director Chandler. 'In the last election Barbour and Republicans campaigned against immigrants to get elected, but so did all the Democratic statewide candidates except Attorney General Jim Hood. The raid will make the climate even worse'

During the 2007 election campaign the Ku Klux Klan organized a 500-person rally in Tupelo, and when MIRA organizer Erik Fleming urged Barbour to veto the bill making work a felony for the undocumented, he was attacked by state anti-immigrant organizations.

Some state labor leaders have contributed to anti-immigrant hostility. After the Howard Industries workers, many of them union members, were arrested, state AFL-CIO President Robert Shaffer told the Associated Press that he doubted that immigrants could join unions if they were not in the country legally. U.S. labor law, however, holds that all workers have union rights, regardless of immigration status. It also says unions have a duty to represent all members fairly and equally

'This raid will just make us more determined,' Evans declared. 'We won't go back to the kind of racism Mississippi has known throughout its past.'