U.S. Representative Hilda Solis is the latest Cabinet selection of Barack Obama aimed at dividing the working class... most all his Cabinet selections have this in common.
That Rep. Hilda Solis comes highly approved by David Bonior tells us the two-million casino workers employed at more than 450 smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws will continue.
Rep. Hilda Solis has been a champion of the Indian Gaming Industry while refusing to stand for justice for casino workers.
So, what is new about Obama's appointments... we are going to see the most corrupt, anti-labor Administration in U.S. history under Barack Obama.
Neither Hilda Solis nor David Bonior ever challenged "at-will hiring, at-will firing" legislation on the books in twenty-eight states in spite of the fact that "at-will hiring, at-will firing" is the major impediment to union organizing; an impediment that not even the Employee Free Choice Act can over come.
Representative Hilda Solis--- One more worthless hypocrite in Washington D.C.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
Questions for Dean Baker and Robert Borosage...
Dean Baker and Robert Borosage are crying about the auto companies not getting a government handout but they never complained when the Big Three were making a lot of money and told the American people to go to hell.
The Big Three reaped the short-term profits now they want us to clean up the long-term mess.
Questions for Dean Baker and Robert Borosage...
How come the Canadian government is kicking in three-billion dollars for this Big Three bailout when this is not a Canadian problem?
More important, who cares about the profits of the auto industry except to the extent that these profits are the result of unpaid labor and represent the theft of wealth?
You completely ignore the little fact that the Big Three took those profits they accumulated off the backs of U.S. and Canadian workers in North America; and, like all good capitalists do, they went in quest of cheap labor and natural resources over-seas... you seem to forget that they took the profits with them.
Jane,
You wrote:
I received this… written and distributed by you:
I am writing you because your call for support of this fiasco and boondoggle reached my desk--- as you obviously intended your call for support of the auto bailout to be distributed widely.
When you distribute such material it is kind of arrogant of you to assume that people with contrary views will not state their opinions in response to you.
You say you don’t know me. So what? What does knowing me have to do with what I sent you? You were not concerned that your cry for this bailout and tears for the demise of the auto industry and loss of three million jobs would reach those like me who you do not know.
However, now we are somewhat acquainted; so, allow me to speak frankly with you.
I think if auto workers and their union leaders acting under the guise of their union are going to mobilize behind a scheme initiated by their employers in a way that drags the rest of us in we all have a right to express our views.
Who am I?
I work with casino workers trying to organize in the Indian Gaming Industry. I am constantly chasing UAW members out of these casinos. Apparently the UAW has no sympathy, empathy nor concern for solidarity with other workers struggling for justice.
I requested of Ron Gettelfinger that he instruct Nadine Nossal--- the UAW’s lead lobbyist in Lansing, Michigan--- to “vigorously oppose” the Gun Lake Casino “Compact;” another “Compact” that will send another two-thousand workers in the Indian Gaming Industry into smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state, federal or tribal labor laws who will join some two-million other workers employed under the same Draconian conditions at over 450 such casino ventures strung out across the United States. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger did nothing as far as acting on my request to him… now he expects the entire nation to respond in support of turning billions of tax-payer dollars over to a pack of crooks and exploiters who mis-managed their industry into oblivion as they raked in tremendous profits. Where are these billions of dollars in profits generated over the last one-hundred years… this wealth has not disappeared into thin air. Those who have adamantly opposed little children getting free lunches in school and have pushed pan-handlers off the streets into prison cells and turned their backs on the hungry and homeless are now begging for billions of dollars in handouts from tax-payers.
Since Ron Gettelfinger and Nadine Nossal have no concern for the plight of casino workers I couldn’t care less if the auto workers see their standard of living brought down to the level of casino workers in the Indian Gaming Industry... then we will all be in the same sinking boat.
Don’t expect us to pay for something the UAW will not support for us. Don’t cry to me about the future of auto workers in Detroit when Ron Gettelfinger has not demonstrated any concern for the plight of their sisters and brothers in the casino industry in outstate Michigan.
I have put forward suggestions to save the auto industry that would be in EVERYONE’S best interest, including auto workers. We all invest… we all own what we invest in… auto workers come out ahead with their contract intact and their livelihoods and standard of living protected as the profiteers and exploiters are pushed out of the picture as vehicles required by society are produced… Wall Street coupon clippers lose; auto workers and tax-payers win.
You reject my suggestions. You come back with you may agree with me in “principle;” I would suggest that you organize people with your “principles” in mind to stand up and fight for those “principles” rather than making the rest of us suffer… and make no mistake about this: the real intent of the Big Three CEO’s bringing forward this bailout request is because they see an opportunity to get out from under their contractual obligations… the auto industry “broke?” Give me a break. They took the profits they made from North American workers and invested those profits overseas in cheap resource and labor markets; and now, not one single congress person, nor one single leader of the UAW has forced these swindlers to even prove they are broke by demanding they open up their books, including of their international operations.
If you really believe that handing over billions of dollars to the Big Three CEO’s will resolve anything; I suggest that the UAW invest its pension and health care funds in this bailout and leave the rest of us out of this.
The other thing autoworkers could do is re-open their contract with the Big Three and agree to work for seven dollars an hour like casino workers do until the management of the Big Three feel they can pay them back with some interest.
The math is really very simple; figure it out.
Three weeks ago I explained to a leader of a large auto local in Detroit the injustices casino workers are being subjected to as he plunked his quarters into a slot machine at the Odawa casino in Petoskey, Michigan. He told me, “Leave me alone; I came here to have fun. Now, if you don’t get out of here I am calling security to toss you out. Buddy, I don’t know who you are.”
So I gave him my card and told him that the next time I catch him sitting at a slot machine wearing his nice fancy UAW jacket I am going to take his picture and plaster it all over the Internet.
Further, I would point out that for over five years we have been fighting to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant and Ron Gettelfinger would not even bring the weight of the UAW into the struggle by supporting a very basic piece of legislation brought forward by a group of progressive Democratic state legislators which would have prevented Ford from demolishing the plant until we could find a new venture for the plant--- either public or private or a combination of the two.
I do not mean to sound rude nor uncaring; but, I suggest that you fight for nationalization of the auto industry under public ownership because you know as well as I do that we are in the midst of a very serious economic crisis--- a depression--- and most working people just will never be able to afford a thirty-thousand dollar vehicle under these circumstances--- so, who is going to purchase the vehicles that autoworkers will build?
Only fools would support the present bailout package aimed at bailing out the Wall Street coupon clippers, bankers and top corporate management.
By the way, because the auto industry has been operated for the sole purpose of profit is the reason Detroit is mired in poverty. The wealth created by workers has been systematically stolen… this is what capitalism is all about.
Beyond the very mild reform--- given the depth of this crisis--- of nationalizing the auto industry; you might want to extend your principles to getting rid of this thoroughly rotten and corrupt capitalist system which has morphed into a parasitical imperialist beast bringing misery to billions of working people across the globe.
Oh, you might want to contact Governor Granholm and suggest to her that she call on the Michigan Senate to reject the Gun Lake Casino “Compact” so it can be renegotiated to include protection of rights for casino workers… we are all, sisters and brothers in struggle together for a better life, right?
Also, could you remind Ron Gettelfinger that many of us have concerns, in addition to the future of the auto industry, which extend to trying to create a better life for the rest of us, too.
Perhaps the auto industry should be turned over to the managers of the Indian Gaming Industry under the terms of these “Compacts?” What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
You might want to check out this blog about the future of the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant which I created before you start lecturing me as if I don’t care about the plight of auto workers and the communities they live in:
http://capitalistglobalization.blogspot.com/
Now, let’s act on the principles we have in common and fight like hell to save the jobs and livelihoods and protect the standard of living of auto workers as we fight like hell to do the same for the entire working class and all working class communities.
I would suggest you consider what the management of the Big Three really want along with their “bridge loan”:
“But McConnell said the measure "isn't nearly tough enough." The Kentucky Republican also called for a different bill — one that would force U.S. automakers to slash wages and benefits to bring them in line with Japanese carmakers Nissan, Toyota and Honda — in return for any federal aid.”
See complete article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/congress_autos
United States Steel announced they are closing down a huge taconite operation on the Iron Range. Will Ron Gettelfinger call for a bailout of United States Steel, too?
You might also want to check out what I wrote on my blog on the Obama website concerning the “Main Street Recovery Program:”
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/alanmaki/gGx898
Check out this pamphlet by Frederick Engels… this is what he wrote in “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:”
Commerce is at a standstill, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsaleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for years; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filter off, more or less depreciated in value, until production and exchange gradually begin to move again. Little by little the pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit and speculation, which finally, after breakneck leaps, ends where it began--in the ditch of a crisis. And so over and over again. We have now, since the year 1825, gone through this five times, and at the present moment (1877) we are going through it for the sixth time.... The fact that the socialised organisation of production within the factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the anarchy of production in society, which exists side by side with and dominates it, is brought home to the capitalists themselves by the violent concentration of capital that occurs during crises, through the ruin of many large, and a still greater number of small, capitalists. The whole mechanism of the capitalist mode of production breaks down under the pressure of the productive forces, its own creations. It is no longer able to turn all this mass of means of production into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason the industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means of production, means of subsistence, available labourers, all the elements of production and of general wealth, are present in abundance. But "abundance becomes the source of distress and want" (Fourier), because it is the very thing that prevents the transformation of the means of production and subsistence into capital. For in capitalistic society the means of production can only function when they have undergone a preliminary transformation into capital, into the means of exploiting human labour power.
Frederick Engels's---
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific/
part of his...
Anti Dühring/
New York: International Publishers, 1935, pages 64-65
How much longer are we going to endure such a rotten capitalist system that creates so much human misery over and over and over again?
With, or without, this bailout, auto workers and the people of Detroit are going to suffer immensely--- just like the rest of us.
Take care.
Yours in solidarity and in struggle,
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541
E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net
Check out my blog:
Thoughts From Podunk
http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/
-----Original Message-----
From: BHTURTLE@aol.com [mailto:BHTURTLE@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2008 6:13 AM
To: amaki000@centurytel.net
Subject: Re: auto bailout
Mr. Maki,
I don't know who you are or why you are writing me, but as much as I may agree in principle to much of what you said, living in Detroit and seeing the suffering of working families might jar your ideology a bit. The failure of this "bailout" is utterly anti-union and the suffering here in Detroit will be enormous.
Jane Cassady
bhturtle@aol.com
YES, WE DID!
In a message dated 12/11/2008 11:28:55 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, amaki000@centurytel.net writes:
The Big Three reaped the short-term profits now they want us to clean up the long-term mess.
Questions for Dean Baker and Robert Borosage...
How come the Canadian government is kicking in three-billion dollars for this Big Three bailout when this is not a Canadian problem?
More important, who cares about the profits of the auto industry except to the extent that these profits are the result of unpaid labor and represent the theft of wealth?
You completely ignore the little fact that the Big Three took those profits they accumulated off the backs of U.S. and Canadian workers in North America; and, like all good capitalists do, they went in quest of cheap labor and natural resources over-seas... you seem to forget that they took the profits with them.
Here is a letter I sent to someone who sent me a letter crying that tax-payers should bailout the Big Three lest these companies going broke create misery for the people of Detroit:
Jane,
You wrote:
Mr. Maki,
I don't know who you are or why you are writing me, but as much as I may agree in principle to much of what you said, living in Detroit and seeing the suffering of working families might jar your ideology a bit. The failure of this "bailout" is utterly anti-union and the suffering here in Detroit will be enormous.
Jane Cassady
bhturtle@aol.com
YES, WE DID!
I received this… written and distributed by you:
From: BHTURTLE
Sent: 12/11/2008 6:28:45 P.M. Eastern Standard Time
Subj: HELP!
Michigan's Gov, Jennifer Granholm, just went on TV to ask everyone in Michigan to contact people in other states who have Republican senators and ask you to call your senator's office immediately and let them know you want them to approve Big 3 help without the sudden union busting amendment these hypocrites just tacked on. It apparently was fine to give their ultra-rich friends billions in the financial sector without strings, but now they want auto workers to take HUGE concessions to get any $ for the companies. It's just outrageous. I am sending this to people in Michigan as well, so you can contact your friends also. The worst senators so far in this is Shelby (Alabama), Kyl (AZ), McConnell (KY) and actually just about every other Republican. Please pass this on to your friends also. It may happen as soon as tonight.
All you have to do is google your senator, or go to the US senate website if you can't remember the name...use the # to call (You'll either get some staff person or a voice mail, and also send an email if you can. ). All you have to say is that you want your senator to support Bridge loans to the Auto companies without the anti-union, anti-worker amendment.
Thanks everyone,
Jane
Jane Cassady
bhturtle@aol.com
YES, WE DID!
I am writing you because your call for support of this fiasco and boondoggle reached my desk--- as you obviously intended your call for support of the auto bailout to be distributed widely.
When you distribute such material it is kind of arrogant of you to assume that people with contrary views will not state their opinions in response to you.
You say you don’t know me. So what? What does knowing me have to do with what I sent you? You were not concerned that your cry for this bailout and tears for the demise of the auto industry and loss of three million jobs would reach those like me who you do not know.
However, now we are somewhat acquainted; so, allow me to speak frankly with you.
I think if auto workers and their union leaders acting under the guise of their union are going to mobilize behind a scheme initiated by their employers in a way that drags the rest of us in we all have a right to express our views.
Who am I?
I work with casino workers trying to organize in the Indian Gaming Industry. I am constantly chasing UAW members out of these casinos. Apparently the UAW has no sympathy, empathy nor concern for solidarity with other workers struggling for justice.
I requested of Ron Gettelfinger that he instruct Nadine Nossal--- the UAW’s lead lobbyist in Lansing, Michigan--- to “vigorously oppose” the Gun Lake Casino “Compact;” another “Compact” that will send another two-thousand workers in the Indian Gaming Industry into smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state, federal or tribal labor laws who will join some two-million other workers employed under the same Draconian conditions at over 450 such casino ventures strung out across the United States. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger did nothing as far as acting on my request to him… now he expects the entire nation to respond in support of turning billions of tax-payer dollars over to a pack of crooks and exploiters who mis-managed their industry into oblivion as they raked in tremendous profits. Where are these billions of dollars in profits generated over the last one-hundred years… this wealth has not disappeared into thin air. Those who have adamantly opposed little children getting free lunches in school and have pushed pan-handlers off the streets into prison cells and turned their backs on the hungry and homeless are now begging for billions of dollars in handouts from tax-payers.
Since Ron Gettelfinger and Nadine Nossal have no concern for the plight of casino workers I couldn’t care less if the auto workers see their standard of living brought down to the level of casino workers in the Indian Gaming Industry... then we will all be in the same sinking boat.
Don’t expect us to pay for something the UAW will not support for us. Don’t cry to me about the future of auto workers in Detroit when Ron Gettelfinger has not demonstrated any concern for the plight of their sisters and brothers in the casino industry in outstate Michigan.
I have put forward suggestions to save the auto industry that would be in EVERYONE’S best interest, including auto workers. We all invest… we all own what we invest in… auto workers come out ahead with their contract intact and their livelihoods and standard of living protected as the profiteers and exploiters are pushed out of the picture as vehicles required by society are produced… Wall Street coupon clippers lose; auto workers and tax-payers win.
You reject my suggestions. You come back with you may agree with me in “principle;” I would suggest that you organize people with your “principles” in mind to stand up and fight for those “principles” rather than making the rest of us suffer… and make no mistake about this: the real intent of the Big Three CEO’s bringing forward this bailout request is because they see an opportunity to get out from under their contractual obligations… the auto industry “broke?” Give me a break. They took the profits they made from North American workers and invested those profits overseas in cheap resource and labor markets; and now, not one single congress person, nor one single leader of the UAW has forced these swindlers to even prove they are broke by demanding they open up their books, including of their international operations.
If you really believe that handing over billions of dollars to the Big Three CEO’s will resolve anything; I suggest that the UAW invest its pension and health care funds in this bailout and leave the rest of us out of this.
The other thing autoworkers could do is re-open their contract with the Big Three and agree to work for seven dollars an hour like casino workers do until the management of the Big Three feel they can pay them back with some interest.
The math is really very simple; figure it out.
Three weeks ago I explained to a leader of a large auto local in Detroit the injustices casino workers are being subjected to as he plunked his quarters into a slot machine at the Odawa casino in Petoskey, Michigan. He told me, “Leave me alone; I came here to have fun. Now, if you don’t get out of here I am calling security to toss you out. Buddy, I don’t know who you are.”
So I gave him my card and told him that the next time I catch him sitting at a slot machine wearing his nice fancy UAW jacket I am going to take his picture and plaster it all over the Internet.
Further, I would point out that for over five years we have been fighting to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant and Ron Gettelfinger would not even bring the weight of the UAW into the struggle by supporting a very basic piece of legislation brought forward by a group of progressive Democratic state legislators which would have prevented Ford from demolishing the plant until we could find a new venture for the plant--- either public or private or a combination of the two.
I do not mean to sound rude nor uncaring; but, I suggest that you fight for nationalization of the auto industry under public ownership because you know as well as I do that we are in the midst of a very serious economic crisis--- a depression--- and most working people just will never be able to afford a thirty-thousand dollar vehicle under these circumstances--- so, who is going to purchase the vehicles that autoworkers will build?
Only fools would support the present bailout package aimed at bailing out the Wall Street coupon clippers, bankers and top corporate management.
By the way, because the auto industry has been operated for the sole purpose of profit is the reason Detroit is mired in poverty. The wealth created by workers has been systematically stolen… this is what capitalism is all about.
Beyond the very mild reform--- given the depth of this crisis--- of nationalizing the auto industry; you might want to extend your principles to getting rid of this thoroughly rotten and corrupt capitalist system which has morphed into a parasitical imperialist beast bringing misery to billions of working people across the globe.
Oh, you might want to contact Governor Granholm and suggest to her that she call on the Michigan Senate to reject the Gun Lake Casino “Compact” so it can be renegotiated to include protection of rights for casino workers… we are all, sisters and brothers in struggle together for a better life, right?
Also, could you remind Ron Gettelfinger that many of us have concerns, in addition to the future of the auto industry, which extend to trying to create a better life for the rest of us, too.
Perhaps the auto industry should be turned over to the managers of the Indian Gaming Industry under the terms of these “Compacts?” What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
You might want to check out this blog about the future of the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant which I created before you start lecturing me as if I don’t care about the plight of auto workers and the communities they live in:
http://capitalistglobalization.blogspot.com/
Now, let’s act on the principles we have in common and fight like hell to save the jobs and livelihoods and protect the standard of living of auto workers as we fight like hell to do the same for the entire working class and all working class communities.
I would suggest you consider what the management of the Big Three really want along with their “bridge loan”:
“But McConnell said the measure "isn't nearly tough enough." The Kentucky Republican also called for a different bill — one that would force U.S. automakers to slash wages and benefits to bring them in line with Japanese carmakers Nissan, Toyota and Honda — in return for any federal aid.”
See complete article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/congress_autos
United States Steel announced they are closing down a huge taconite operation on the Iron Range. Will Ron Gettelfinger call for a bailout of United States Steel, too?
You might also want to check out what I wrote on my blog on the Obama website concerning the “Main Street Recovery Program:”
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/alanmaki/gGx898
Check out this pamphlet by Frederick Engels… this is what he wrote in “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:”
Commerce is at a standstill, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsaleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for years; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filter off, more or less depreciated in value, until production and exchange gradually begin to move again. Little by little the pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit and speculation, which finally, after breakneck leaps, ends where it began--in the ditch of a crisis. And so over and over again. We have now, since the year 1825, gone through this five times, and at the present moment (1877) we are going through it for the sixth time.... The fact that the socialised organisation of production within the factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the anarchy of production in society, which exists side by side with and dominates it, is brought home to the capitalists themselves by the violent concentration of capital that occurs during crises, through the ruin of many large, and a still greater number of small, capitalists. The whole mechanism of the capitalist mode of production breaks down under the pressure of the productive forces, its own creations. It is no longer able to turn all this mass of means of production into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason the industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means of production, means of subsistence, available labourers, all the elements of production and of general wealth, are present in abundance. But "abundance becomes the source of distress and want" (Fourier), because it is the very thing that prevents the transformation of the means of production and subsistence into capital. For in capitalistic society the means of production can only function when they have undergone a preliminary transformation into capital, into the means of exploiting human labour power.
Frederick Engels's---
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific/
part of his...
Anti Dühring/
New York: International Publishers, 1935, pages 64-65
How much longer are we going to endure such a rotten capitalist system that creates so much human misery over and over and over again?
With, or without, this bailout, auto workers and the people of Detroit are going to suffer immensely--- just like the rest of us.
Take care.
Yours in solidarity and in struggle,
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541
E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net
Check out my blog:
Thoughts From Podunk
http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/
-----Original Message-----
From: BHTURTLE@aol.com [mailto:BHTURTLE@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2008 6:13 AM
To: amaki000@centurytel.net
Subject: Re: auto bailout
Mr. Maki,
I don't know who you are or why you are writing me, but as much as I may agree in principle to much of what you said, living in Detroit and seeing the suffering of working families might jar your ideology a bit. The failure of this "bailout" is utterly anti-union and the suffering here in Detroit will be enormous.
Jane Cassady
bhturtle@aol.com
YES, WE DID!
In a message dated 12/11/2008 11:28:55 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, amaki000@centurytel.net writes:
This Letter to the Editor is submitted to the Star Tribune for publication; writer grants Editor the right to edit as seen fit.
November 12, 2008
First Wall Street Bankers. Now the Big Three automakers. Who is coming for a handout and free lunch next? The lobbying industry?
The government is prepared to let the St. Paul Ford Twin City Assembly Plant and two-thousand jobs go down the river because there was no money to save this one plant and now tax-payers are being told, not even asked, that they will be bailing out the entire auto industry.
Obviously free enterprise has failed. Why should tax-payers bailout the Big Three when in a few months the price of each of the Big Three's stocks should be less than one-dollar a share.
Tax-payers will have the opportunity to purchase the entire automotive industry for a real bargain for far less than what the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing us.
A board consisting of all the stake-holders could be brought together and we could finally produce quality products which are environmentally friendly... not to mention affordable.
Capitalism hasn't worked; socialism will.
The Big Three cry poverty after they have taken the wealth created by North American workers and invested that wealth in quest of cheaper labor and resources overseas.
I don't believe politicians would even consider turning over one penny to these greedy corporations without even having had the opportunity to see their books... all the books, including their international operations.
What tax-payers finance, tax-payers should own.
Nationalization under public ownership is the solution to the problems of the auto industry.
The time has come to put People, Jobs and the Environment Before Corporate Profits!
Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541
E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net
Check out my blog:
Thoughts From Podunk
http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/
A dialogue concerning the important struggle of Republic Windows and Doors workers
I am republishing Earl Silbar's commentary and analysis here because, for one, I agree with it completely... and two, I think there is much all workers can learn from this struggle.
This struggle requires a book, at least a pamphlet, blog or website written collectively by all those who were participants in this struggle--- first and foremost the workers who made the decision to fight rather than accept an injustice along with those who acted in solidarity as Earl Silbar did and continues to do in writing and distributing his thoughts and observations.
Alan L. Maki
-----Original Message-----
From: WCS-A@yahoogroups.com [mailto:WCS-A@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Red1pearl@aol.com
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2008 11:06 AM
To: chi-labor-against-the-war@yahoogroups.com; anticapdiscuss@yahoogroups.com; chicagomayday@yahoogroups.com; Working_Class_News@yahoogroups.com; RailroadWorkersUnited@googlegroups.com; core@lists.riseup.net; WCS-A@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [WCS-A] Re: Workers Republic -- upcoming video/discussion
The Republic Windows plant occupation and victory has raised some issues (and a video clip ) below with my comments here, fyi.
The Republic Windows workers took "matters into their own hands"yes, but not outside of or against their union, the UE. To suggest otherwise is, from everything I saw and heard, simply wrong. My understanding- based on going to both major rallies, listening to a few workers inside the plant, and talking with one worker there for a while, watching the UE refuse to support settlement until the workers voted on it- is this: the workers discussed the situation and voted unanimously to occupy the plant as part of a union- called meeting, with union organizers there and with the active, actually vital, support of their union at all levels. Same with the unanimous decision to accept the settlement: it was at a union-called meeting as well. To portray this otherwise is simply inaccurate, misleading and unintentionally harmful
While some of us on the left might want this to have been a 'workers republic' (as the video title calls it), it was not a worker-run plant, let alone a republic,however cute the play on words, this being Republic Windows. Nor a workers action outside of union leadership/control (as comrade Sean puts it here). Imposing our ideas on reality harms everyone's ability to understand what did happen and learn from it.
In fact, this was a defensive fight to win pay/benefits owed them under federal (and state) law. There was concern for the switch of work to the newly-bought plant in Iowa, hence occupation to use the equipment and inventory as 'collateral' or hold it hostage to a settlement for those wages/benefits. The workers chose to bypass the legal system, violate property laws, and put themselves at risk of arrest and serious charges to win what the law _said_ was theirs. Thus, it was both legally-based and illegally fought. They had little/nothing to lose; they were out of work with 3 days notice; they got no severance pay despite the WARN federal law mandating 60 days notice of closings, their medical insurance was cancelled the last day of work; and their vacation pay was killed. What did they expect? To be taken to jail.
Several workers told me that they were simply astonished at the solidarity they experienced, with hundreds at rallies, people and groups of union workers coming to the plant with coffee, food, blankets, money, comradeship, solidarity greetings, and cheer. The Republic workers' bold, organized, and self-disciplined action thrilled millions who are sick with fear and filled with anger at billions for bankers, nothing for workers. Their fight was our fight; in a very real sense, their actions were the flame of worker resistance so many have been waiting for. After decades of defeats where the unions' leaders have sabotaged the struggles, from PATCO on, we stood our grounds and won with union support, not sabotage.
At the same time, Sean asks where were the leaders of the Chicago Federation of Labor, with their huge membership numbers? Good question.In fact, the Fed and its unions did nothing visible to build the rally either at the plant on Saturday or at the Bank of America on Wednesday. No Fed officials spoke, no union banners, no visible delegations except a few AFSCME staffers while hundreds of AFSCME nearby members likely were not even told of the rally. I did see some from Teamsters 705. The SEIU, invisible despite they too having many members downtown, reportedly struck a deal on Tuesday with the Bank of America /Republic owners for just the vacation pay. The workers/UE did not even vote on this reported deal; from that failure, some longtime worker-activists deduce that SEIU pulled out its support of the Bank of America rally. Perhaps this accounts for the failure of the Chicago Fed officers to also show up. Can't say. Asks them.
Politically, the Republic/UE slogan "Bank of America, you got bailed out, we got sold out!" was astute and on every UE picket sign. It tapped into the huge resentment and anger at the (bi-partisan) giveaway to the thieves. It connceted this fight with larger class forces and feeling. In fact, the union was intimately involved, from beginning to end, top to bottom. If one has criticisms of UE's leadership, be specific and not project our wishes onto that reality. Making Procrustean beds is no substitute for concrete analysis.
And wishful thinking is no substitute for building on the actual developments with all their potential and limitations. This was not a 'Workers' Republic' despite the video title: they did not attempt to run production. Nor was it a workers' fight without or against their union as suggested below. Personally, I wished this had developed into a fight to stop the union-busting move to switch production to a non-union plant, but it did not. That was not the workers' objective as voted and acted on.
Did the union leadership encourage this limitation? I don't know. Was there worker sentiment to fight to keep the plant open? Some. Was the decision to limit the occupation to what was the workers' legal rights correct, given the actual forces on both sides? Could a fight for keeping the plant here open have won? I don't know that either. Only people or groups with contacts in the plant and able to estimate what kind of action-solidarity on many fronts was available for such a major confrontation. Another life-lesson on the need for an organization devoted to worker-socialism, revolution, etc.
In any case, this fight was a great development and a powerful sign of what workers can do with action. Our power comes as workers,not litigants or consumers. The potential of workers' struggle and solidarity came through. This fight was our fight, and we WON!
in solidarity,
Earl Silbar
And for those conflicted about undocumented/illegal immigrants, I have a question: these were mostly Mexican workers, so did you worry about their immigration status, or did you support their fight as just and as our fight? Maybe the fact that they were Mexican and Black meant that they were more willing to take such action. Maybe N. American (white) workers and others have lots to learn from those pressed down, such as our brothers and sisters from Republic Windows.
In a message dated 12/12/2008 8:57:06 A.M. Central Standard Time, LOUGHFINN@AOL.COM writes:
This is a great victory. I am excited to see the video. But i would like to ask those reading this to consider one detail . You mention that the workers took "matters into their own hands." It is very good they did. because if they had not the union leaders would not have moved to occupy. As far as I know there are up to $1 million workers affiliated to the Chicago Federation od Labour. Where were the leaders of this huge force. It was left up to the workers themselves, the left and religious groups who supported them to take action. And of course the odd capitalist politician who saw the way the wind was blowing and decided to take wing. Thanks for making the video.
Sean
Check us out:
www.weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com
www.laborsmilitantvoice.com
www.myspace.com/lmvprofile
-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Duncan
To: mail@laborbeat.org
Sent: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 6:33 am
Subject: [chi-labor-against-the-war] Workers Republic -- excerpts from upcoming Labor Beat show -- YouTube link
Workers' Republic - excerpts
Click here to see on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiFzP48UHYw
When the workers at Republic Windows and Doors were notified their factory would close in three days, they took matters into their own hands. The union work force seized control of the factory for 6 days to demand the severance they are owed by law. On the sixth day of their occupation, they won all their demands, and showed the world's working class a classic example of people power (something not seen in the USA for decades).
This short video from Labor Beat represents a fraction of our coverage of this historic event. The full 30-minute episode, "Workers' Republic," will be uploaded soon.
Copyright 2008 Labor Beat. Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is affiliated with IBEW 1220. Views expressed are those of the producer, not necessarily of IBEW. For info: lduncan@igc.org,www.laborbeat.org. 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit Google Video or YouTube and search "Labor Beat".
Scenes during the occupation
Photo: Andrew Freund / Labor Beat
Arguing for nationalizing the banks, he argued,
"...no effective control of any kind over the individual banks and their operations is possible ... because it is impossible to keep track of the extremely complex, involved and wily tricks that are used in drawing up balance sheets, founding fictitious enterprises and subsidiaries, enlisting the services of figureheads, and so on, and so forth."
Vladimir Lenin, Sept. 1917, "The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It." Collected Works vol. 25.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Human Rights Day, the AFL-CIO, the Democrats and workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry
Two-million workers are employed at more that 450 smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state, federal or tribal labor laws in the Indian Gaming Industry and John Sweeney and the AFL-CIO refuse to acknowledge the injustice of these circumstances as gross human rights abuses.
This is the statement of the AFL-CIO issued on the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Why hasn't the AFL-CIO leafleted the 450 casinos employing over two-million workers left to fend for themselves at the hands of a bunch of mobsters and the Fertitta family together with the likes of Floyd Jourdain, Melony Benjamin and Stanley Crooks here in the United States of America under such Draconian conditions?
With "at-will hiring, at-will firing" legislation in twenty-eight states, ignored by the leadership of the AFL-CIO; but, understood by every rank-and-file union organizer and activist as being the main and primary impediment to union organizing... when combined with the plight of casino workers employed in the smoke-filled casinos of the Indian Gaming Industry at poverty wages and without any rights ignored by the AFL-CIO leadership, this statement from the AFL-CIO's web site is the epitome of hypocrisy.
When politicians and employers read such statements based upon what everyone knows is a false sense of compassion and concern for working people, no employer will ever fear the AFL-CIO knowing that even with the Employee Free Choice Act the AFL-CIO leadership is nothing but a bunch of big-blowhards that couldn't muster the common sense to organize an escape from a wet paper bag; much less act to empower working people to organize in defense of their human rights at work and in the communities where they live.
For over twenty-years, casino workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry have been impatiently waiting for the words of these big-blowhard leaders like President John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO to match their deeds.
Again, on the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights we get profound statements not backed up by the allocation of resources to organize in defense of the human rights of working people.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
This is the statement of the AFL-CIO issued on the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Why hasn't the AFL-CIO leafleted the 450 casinos employing over two-million workers left to fend for themselves at the hands of a bunch of mobsters and the Fertitta family together with the likes of Floyd Jourdain, Melony Benjamin and Stanley Crooks here in the United States of America under such Draconian conditions?
Human Rights Day, 2008: U.S. Workers Still Lack the Freedom to Form Unions
by Seth Michaels, Dec 10, 2008
The Employee Free Choice Act, a vital bill to restore workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life, is a top priority for working families in the new Congress. Today, as we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it’s important to remember how crucial it is to protect the right of workers to form unions to protect fair pay, good benefits and a safe work environment.
Around the country today, union volunteers are marking the anniversary by leafleting worksites and getting the message out about the Employee Free Choice Act. In coming weeks, labor councils around the country hold meetings to spread the word about this critical bill to restore worker power and rebuild the middle class.
The Employee Free Choice Act is under heavy attack from CEOs and Big Business lobbyists. One of the country’s largest employers, McDonald’s, is taking the anti-worker side in the fight over the bill.
Crain’s Chicago Business reveals that in a Nov. 25 memo to franchise owners, McDonald’s USA President Don Thompson stakes out the company’s opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act and asks franchisees to support anti-Employee Free Choice Act politicians. (Sound familiar? That’s because Wal-Mart pulled the same trick with its managers this year.)
Why is McDonald’s trying to block a bill that would restore workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life? Because it might actually result in workers bargaining for a better life. As Crain’s notes:
With more than 600,000 U.S. restaurant workers, many earning less than $10 an hour, the chain makes an attractive target for union organizers. Unionized employees could demand higher pay and stricter work rules in McDonald’s kitchens.
Apparently, McDonald’s likes the current company-dominated system just fine—it allows them to keep workers in low-paying “McJobs.”
McDonald’s is a member of the National Restaurant Association, a business lobbying group that funds the cunningly misnamed Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, a major corporate front group in the campaign to block the freedom to form unions.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says McDonald’s effort to block the Employee Free Choice Act is an attack on workers and the middle class.
Working people know that the bargaining power they gain through unions for fair wages, better health care, pensions and job security is our nation’s single best tool for creating an economy that works for all—60 million say they’d join a union tomorrow if given the chance. In launching a campaign to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, McDonald’s has taken direct aim at the customers and communities it serves and is shooting down their best chance at realizing their aspirations for their families and futures.
Crain’s makes the mistake of relying for its reporting on Rick Berman, a Washington, D.C., lobbyist who has built his career around undermining unions, fighting consumer protections and protecting corporate power. Berman is involved with anti-Employee Free Choice Act front groups, and, without scrutinizing his connections, Crain’s takes for granted Berman’s misleading description of the bill. (It’s a mistake that numerous media outlets are making. The Washington Post relied on Berman as a source for a misleading article on the Employee Free Choice Act yesterday, without mentioning his lobbying activities. Economist Dean Baker called the article “incorrect” on the key facts.)
As Sweeney says, the Employee Free Choice Act is about leveling the playing field and giving workers a stake, and the big corporations who are fighting to block it are benefiting from the imbalance of power.
Corporations like McDonald’s and their CEOs hold all the cards in today’s economy and working families are left to struggle with the economy they leave behind. McDonald’s CEO James Skinner took home over $12.3 million in total compensation last year. If he were paid by the hour, he would make nearly 600 times the less than $10/hour pay of many of McDonald’s 600,000 employees.
As we remember the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, let’s speak out against corporations like McDonald’s, who are putting corporate power ahead of the freedom to form unions.
With "at-will hiring, at-will firing" legislation in twenty-eight states, ignored by the leadership of the AFL-CIO; but, understood by every rank-and-file union organizer and activist as being the main and primary impediment to union organizing... when combined with the plight of casino workers employed in the smoke-filled casinos of the Indian Gaming Industry at poverty wages and without any rights ignored by the AFL-CIO leadership, this statement from the AFL-CIO's web site is the epitome of hypocrisy.
When politicians and employers read such statements based upon what everyone knows is a false sense of compassion and concern for working people, no employer will ever fear the AFL-CIO knowing that even with the Employee Free Choice Act the AFL-CIO leadership is nothing but a bunch of big-blowhards that couldn't muster the common sense to organize an escape from a wet paper bag; much less act to empower working people to organize in defense of their human rights at work and in the communities where they live.
For over twenty-years, casino workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry have been impatiently waiting for the words of these big-blowhard leaders like President John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO to match their deeds.
Again, on the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights we get profound statements not backed up by the allocation of resources to organize in defense of the human rights of working people.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Saturday, December 6, 2008
The change casino workers seek...
Amy Berglund, Regional Representative, United States Senator Carl Levin;
Please find below a letter I sent to President-elect Barack H. Obama and “Cc’ed” to others.
I trust that this will satisfy your requirement per our conversation in your Escanaba, Michigan office concerning your looking into the plight of casino workers.
Should you have further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me by e-mail or by letter-- U.S. Post. I think it best, given you deny knowing nothing about the situation casino workers find themselves in through no fault of their own but as a direct result of actions taken by United States Senator Carl Levin and other federal and state legislators along with state and federal agencies, that we keep everything in writing so there is now a clear and permanent record since you are the one to have requested that I provide you with something in writing before you would bring yourself up to speed on this issue.
I trust that you will have the necessary discussion with Senator Levin concerning what can, and will, be done to remedy this grave injustice.
Please respond that you received this e-mail.
Feel free to show this letter to anyone; I place no restrictions on its use.
I remind you that there are thousands of workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry within your region.
I urge you to familiarize yourself with the “Compacts” enabling these casinos to exist with workers being denied their most basic and fundamental human rights--- by intent.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Cc:
President Maggie Bird, Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Saturday, December 6, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama asked to resolve injustices of casino workers
President-elect Barack H. Obama;
I write to you on behalf of the workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry at the suggestion of a number of concerned labor and human rights activists.
Some two-million Americans work in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state, federal or tribal labor laws in the Indian Gaming Industry as a result of the "Compacts" creating this industry.
What do you intend to do to correct this injustice?
Sovereignty is NOT an issue. There are around 200 sovereign nations in the world today and none of these sovereign nations are without any rights for working people.
In fact, these "Compacts" allow for state and FBI enforcement of state and federal statutes involving criminal activity.
In fact, these "Compacts" allow for state regulatory agencies to assure that slot machines are in compliance.
But, when it comes to protecting the rights (human rights) of workers there are no provisions in these "Compacts" to protect the rights of workers.
There are now over 450 such gaming establishments (casinos/resorts/restaurants/hotels/motels/amusement and theme parks) comprising the Indian Gaming Industry.
Congress and the Department of Interior along with various other state and federal governments and agencies are involved.
If "sovereignty" was the reason for the federal and state governments remaining aloof from protecting the rights of these workers there would be no need for the state or federal governments and various state and federal agencies to be involved in the Indian Gaming Industry because Indian Nations would not be coerced to come to state and federal governments for approval vis-Ã -vis these "Compacts" in the first place.
I would call to your attention that the Provincial government of Manitoba, Canada remedied this very easily by telling tribal governments that unless they made their casinos smoke-free the government would not consider any further approval for new casinos or casino expansions.
The United States government could very easily do the same thing and insist that before any further "Compacts" are entered into they would have to include smoke-free provisions and provisions that all state and federal labor laws would be adhered to and state and federal departments of labor would be responsible for enforcement.
That some two-million workers (not including those who quit or get fired which comprises many more workers because of the huge turn-over) are employed under such draconian conditions in the United States of America is shameful.
We expect that the Employee Free Choice Act will be written to include these workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry before you sign it.
We further expect that you will address the issue of the need to rescind "at-will hiring, at-will firing" legislation in some twenty-eight states which as it stands would render "card check" useless.
Right now there is the "Gun Lake Casino Compact" pending in the Michigan Senate, having been approved by Governor Jennifer Granholm and the Michigan House with the full knowledge by Governor Granholm and each member of the Michigan Legislature that this was one more "Compact" which would deny basic and fundamental human rights to another two-thousand casino workers. Since you have such a chummy relationship with Governor Granholm and David Bonior who is supposed to be a champion of labor rights you should have no problem convincing Governor Granholm that she should request this "Compact" be withdrawn for approval pending the suggestion that the rights of casino workers must be included... this would set a precedent that would be difficult for future "Compacts" to ignore.
Also, you should be aware that second-hand smoke in the workplace has been designated as one of the primary health concerns by the American Cancer Society and the Heart and Lung Foundation. Further, many casino workers are women of child-bearing age, pregnant women and nursing mothers for whom the health hazards and dangers of second-hand smoke are known to be very vulnerable.
Two issues are involved with the problem of second-hand smoke for casino workers.
First is the obvious direct health factor.
Second, is the fact that you have talked a great deal about cutting health care costs. Common sense dictates that millions, if not billions, of dollars can be saved in health care costs by eliminating smoking in the Indian Gaming Industry.
Scientific figures are not available for second-hand smoke related health care issues and costs in the Indian Gaming Industry because these casino managements have refused to participate in the collection of data by state and federal agencies and the American Cancer Society and Heart and Lung Foundation which raises another grave concern related not only to worker health in the place of employment, but the human rights of workers to be made aware of the health dangers in the workplace.
In short, workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry have no rights at work; they have no voice at work. Workers employed under these conditions have no rights and no voice in the communities where they live lest the employer finds out about activities considered to be inappropriate.
At the largest casino operation in Minnesota, and one of the largest in the Indian Gaming Industry in the United States of America employing over 5,000 workers... Mystic Lake Casino/Resort/Hotel/Restaurants... workers are forced to sign a statement acknowledging that they will be terminated from employment if they engage in any form of union organizing activity which includes signing a union card.
As the world is about to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 2008--- each and everyone of the rights articulated in this important Declaration are being denied over two-million workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry.
Many of these workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry are people of color which raises the question of racism.
Many of these two-million workers are very young workers for whom this will be their first job under these atrocious working conditions, thus creating other obvious problems.
In addition, these casino managements are employing thousands of undocumented workers making for an even more complex situation. Imagine, if you will, working in a place of employment where even those around you have no rights!
I call to your attention that Amy Berglund, the Regional Assistant to United States Senator Carl Levin claims to know nothing about this disgraceful and shameful situation workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry even though, right under her nose, workers are being fired left and right by the Island Casino management.
I would also call to your attention that most of these casinos are managed by non-Native American firms such as the Fertitta's "Station Casinos." I trust you know the history of Frank Fertitta and his involvement in gaming. I doubt that you would want one of your own children growing up having to work for such an employer while being denied of all rights.
Perhaps we should get together to discuss these concerns. Two-million Americans being intentionally and systematically denied their human rights is no small matter; especially with the sensitivity across the globe there is to human rights issues. We hope that with your election these injustices will come to an end... this is the change casinos workers seek from your election.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me by e-mail or by letter--- U.S. Post.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Cc:
President Maggie Bird, Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm
David Bonior
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
Representative Keith Ellison, Minnesota
Minnesota State Representative Tom Rukavina
Minnesota State Senator David Tomassoni
Amy Berglund, Regional Representative for U.S. Senator Carl Levin
Elizabeth Reed, Staff Assistant, U.S. Senator Carl Levin
Guy Ryder, General Secretary, International Trade Union
Confederation
President Benjamin Todd Jealous, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541
E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net
Check out my blog:
Thoughts From Podunk
http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/
Please find below a letter I sent to President-elect Barack H. Obama and “Cc’ed” to others.
I trust that this will satisfy your requirement per our conversation in your Escanaba, Michigan office concerning your looking into the plight of casino workers.
Should you have further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me by e-mail or by letter-- U.S. Post. I think it best, given you deny knowing nothing about the situation casino workers find themselves in through no fault of their own but as a direct result of actions taken by United States Senator Carl Levin and other federal and state legislators along with state and federal agencies, that we keep everything in writing so there is now a clear and permanent record since you are the one to have requested that I provide you with something in writing before you would bring yourself up to speed on this issue.
I trust that you will have the necessary discussion with Senator Levin concerning what can, and will, be done to remedy this grave injustice.
Please respond that you received this e-mail.
Feel free to show this letter to anyone; I place no restrictions on its use.
I remind you that there are thousands of workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry within your region.
I urge you to familiarize yourself with the “Compacts” enabling these casinos to exist with workers being denied their most basic and fundamental human rights--- by intent.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Cc:
President Maggie Bird, Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Saturday, December 6, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama asked to resolve injustices of casino workers
President-elect Barack H. Obama;
I write to you on behalf of the workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry at the suggestion of a number of concerned labor and human rights activists.
Some two-million Americans work in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state, federal or tribal labor laws in the Indian Gaming Industry as a result of the "Compacts" creating this industry.
What do you intend to do to correct this injustice?
Sovereignty is NOT an issue. There are around 200 sovereign nations in the world today and none of these sovereign nations are without any rights for working people.
In fact, these "Compacts" allow for state and FBI enforcement of state and federal statutes involving criminal activity.
In fact, these "Compacts" allow for state regulatory agencies to assure that slot machines are in compliance.
But, when it comes to protecting the rights (human rights) of workers there are no provisions in these "Compacts" to protect the rights of workers.
There are now over 450 such gaming establishments (casinos/resorts/restaurants/hotels/motels/amusement and theme parks) comprising the Indian Gaming Industry.
Congress and the Department of Interior along with various other state and federal governments and agencies are involved.
If "sovereignty" was the reason for the federal and state governments remaining aloof from protecting the rights of these workers there would be no need for the state or federal governments and various state and federal agencies to be involved in the Indian Gaming Industry because Indian Nations would not be coerced to come to state and federal governments for approval vis-Ã -vis these "Compacts" in the first place.
I would call to your attention that the Provincial government of Manitoba, Canada remedied this very easily by telling tribal governments that unless they made their casinos smoke-free the government would not consider any further approval for new casinos or casino expansions.
The United States government could very easily do the same thing and insist that before any further "Compacts" are entered into they would have to include smoke-free provisions and provisions that all state and federal labor laws would be adhered to and state and federal departments of labor would be responsible for enforcement.
That some two-million workers (not including those who quit or get fired which comprises many more workers because of the huge turn-over) are employed under such draconian conditions in the United States of America is shameful.
We expect that the Employee Free Choice Act will be written to include these workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry before you sign it.
We further expect that you will address the issue of the need to rescind "at-will hiring, at-will firing" legislation in some twenty-eight states which as it stands would render "card check" useless.
Right now there is the "Gun Lake Casino Compact" pending in the Michigan Senate, having been approved by Governor Jennifer Granholm and the Michigan House with the full knowledge by Governor Granholm and each member of the Michigan Legislature that this was one more "Compact" which would deny basic and fundamental human rights to another two-thousand casino workers. Since you have such a chummy relationship with Governor Granholm and David Bonior who is supposed to be a champion of labor rights you should have no problem convincing Governor Granholm that she should request this "Compact" be withdrawn for approval pending the suggestion that the rights of casino workers must be included... this would set a precedent that would be difficult for future "Compacts" to ignore.
Also, you should be aware that second-hand smoke in the workplace has been designated as one of the primary health concerns by the American Cancer Society and the Heart and Lung Foundation. Further, many casino workers are women of child-bearing age, pregnant women and nursing mothers for whom the health hazards and dangers of second-hand smoke are known to be very vulnerable.
Two issues are involved with the problem of second-hand smoke for casino workers.
First is the obvious direct health factor.
Second, is the fact that you have talked a great deal about cutting health care costs. Common sense dictates that millions, if not billions, of dollars can be saved in health care costs by eliminating smoking in the Indian Gaming Industry.
Scientific figures are not available for second-hand smoke related health care issues and costs in the Indian Gaming Industry because these casino managements have refused to participate in the collection of data by state and federal agencies and the American Cancer Society and Heart and Lung Foundation which raises another grave concern related not only to worker health in the place of employment, but the human rights of workers to be made aware of the health dangers in the workplace.
In short, workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry have no rights at work; they have no voice at work. Workers employed under these conditions have no rights and no voice in the communities where they live lest the employer finds out about activities considered to be inappropriate.
At the largest casino operation in Minnesota, and one of the largest in the Indian Gaming Industry in the United States of America employing over 5,000 workers... Mystic Lake Casino/Resort/Hotel/Restaurants... workers are forced to sign a statement acknowledging that they will be terminated from employment if they engage in any form of union organizing activity which includes signing a union card.
As the world is about to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 2008--- each and everyone of the rights articulated in this important Declaration are being denied over two-million workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry.
Many of these workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry are people of color which raises the question of racism.
Many of these two-million workers are very young workers for whom this will be their first job under these atrocious working conditions, thus creating other obvious problems.
In addition, these casino managements are employing thousands of undocumented workers making for an even more complex situation. Imagine, if you will, working in a place of employment where even those around you have no rights!
I call to your attention that Amy Berglund, the Regional Assistant to United States Senator Carl Levin claims to know nothing about this disgraceful and shameful situation workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry even though, right under her nose, workers are being fired left and right by the Island Casino management.
I would also call to your attention that most of these casinos are managed by non-Native American firms such as the Fertitta's "Station Casinos." I trust you know the history of Frank Fertitta and his involvement in gaming. I doubt that you would want one of your own children growing up having to work for such an employer while being denied of all rights.
Perhaps we should get together to discuss these concerns. Two-million Americans being intentionally and systematically denied their human rights is no small matter; especially with the sensitivity across the globe there is to human rights issues. We hope that with your election these injustices will come to an end... this is the change casinos workers seek from your election.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me by e-mail or by letter--- U.S. Post.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Cc:
President Maggie Bird, Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm
David Bonior
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
Representative Keith Ellison, Minnesota
Minnesota State Representative Tom Rukavina
Minnesota State Senator David Tomassoni
Amy Berglund, Regional Representative for U.S. Senator Carl Levin
Elizabeth Reed, Staff Assistant, U.S. Senator Carl Levin
Guy Ryder, General Secretary, International Trade Union
Confederation
President Benjamin Todd Jealous, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541
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Workers Occupy Factory in struggle for their rights
"Republic Windows and Doors workers require the support of all working people. They fight for our rights as they fight for their own rights."
Maggie Bird
President,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Idled workers occupy factory in Chicago
By RUPA SHENOY, Associated Press Writer Rupa Shenoy, Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO – Workers laid off from their jobs at a factory have occupied the building and are demanding assurances they'll get severance and vacation pay that they say they are owed.
About 200 employees of Republic Windows and Doors began their sit-in Friday, the last scheduled day of the plant's operation.
Leah Fried, an organizer with the United Electrical Workers, said the Chicago-based vinyl window manufacturer failed to give 60 days' notice required by law before shutting down.
Workers also were angered when company officials didn't show up for a meeting Friday that had been arranged by U.S. Rep Luis Gutierrez, a Chicago Democrat, she said.
During the peaceful takeover, workers have been shoveling snow and cleaning the building, Fried said.
"We're doing something we haven't since the 1930s, so we're trying to make it work," Fried said.
Union officials said another meeting with the company is scheduled for Monday.
Representatives of Republic Windows did not immediately respond Saturday to calls and e-mails seeking comment.
Police spokeswoman Laura Kubiak said authorities were aware of the situation and officers were patrolling the area.
Crain's Chicago Business reported that the company's monthly sales had fallen to $2.9 million from $4 million during the past month. In a memo to the union, obtained by the business journal, Republic CEO Rich Gillman said the company had "no choice but to shut our doors."
Workers Occupy Factory
Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008
Incidences similar to this may soon be taking place across the United States. Seize the day, seize the hour, seize the means of production.
The workers of Republic Windows and Doors are right this minute occupying their factory, which was due to close at 10:00 AM this morning. The workers are fighting for pay for their lost vacation days and for the 75 days notice that they are guaranteed under Illinois law. This is the first time in many years workers have taken the bold, militant strategy of occupying their place of work to demand justice. The plan to occupy the plant until the hear the results of the next round of negotiations Monday afternoon. THEY NEED TO KNOW THEY HAVE OUR SUPPORT!!!
A rally has been planned for 12:00 Noon tomorrow.
Please attend.
BUT WE SHOULD ORGANIZE A CONSTANT PRESENCE OF COMMUNITY MEMBERS PICKETING OUTSIDE THE FACTORY! BRING FOOD AND COFFEE FOR THE WORKERS. It is our presence and the press that is the workers best defense against the police raiding the factory.
These workers are fighting for all of us!!! As the economic crisis deepens we need to launch a working class fight back.
These workers are the starting point and deserve our full support.
Go to…
Republic Windows & Doors
1333 N. Hickory
On Goose Island, near the intersection of Division & Clyborn
Chicago factory occupied
December 6, 2008
WORKERS OCCUPYING the Republic Windows & Doors factory slated for closure are vowing to remain in the Chicago plant until they win the $1.5 million in severance and vacation pay owed them by management.
In a tactic rarely used in the U.S. since the labor struggles of the 1930s, the workers, members of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) Local 1110, refused to leave the plant on December 5, its last scheduled day of operation.
"We decided to do it because this is money that belongs to us," said Maria Roman, who's worked at the plant for eight years. "These are our rights."
Word of the occupation spread quickly both among labor and immigrant rights activists--the overwhelming majority of the workers are Latinos. Seven local TV news stations showed up to do interviews and live reports, and a steady stream of activists arrived to bring donations of food and money and to plan solidarity actions.
Management claims that it can't continue operations because its main creditor, Bank of America (BoA), refuses to make any more loans to the company. After workers picketed BoA headquarters December 3, bank officials agreed to sit down with Republic management and UE to discuss the matter at a December 5 meeting arranged by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill), said UE organizer Leah Fried.
BoA had said that it couldn't discuss the matter with the union directly without written approval from Republic's management. But Republic representatives failed to show up at the meeting, and plant managers prepared to close the doors for good--violating the federal WARN Act that requires 60 days notice of a plant closure.
The workers decided this couldn't go unchallenged. "The company and Bank of America are throwing the ball to one another, and we're in the middle," said Vicente Rangel, a shop steward and former vice president of Local 1110.
Many workers had suspected the company was planning to go out of business--and perhaps restart operations elsewhere. Several said managers had removed both production and office equipment in recent days.
Furthermore, while inventory records indicated there were plenty of parts in the plant, workers on the production line found shortages. And the order books, while certainly down from the peak years of the housing boom, didn't square with management's claims of a total collapse. "Where did all those windows go?" one worker asked.
Workers were especially outraged that Bank of America, which recently received a bailout in taxpayer money, won't provide credit to Republic. "They get $25 billion from the government, and won't loan a few million to this company so workers can keep their jobs?" said Ricardo Caceres, who has worked at the plant for six years.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE MEMBERS of Local 1110 have a history of struggle. In 2004, they decertified the Central States Joint Board--a union notorious for corruption and sweetheart contracts with management--and brought in UE, a far more democratic organization.
In May of this year, Local 1110 mobilized for a contract by organizing a "practice" picket, and 70 workers used their lunch break to confront the boss with a petition listing their demands. The workers were able to turn back company's effort to win major concessions and won solid pay increases.Now, management is trying to get revenge by pocketing money that belongs to the workers.
UE officials and workers acknowledge that it will be difficult to stop the plant from closing. But they're determined to get the money owed to them--and they believe that by fighting, they can set an example for other workers facing layoffs and plant closures as the recession deepens.
Negotiations are set for Monday, December 8. Whatever happens, however, the workers have already sent a message to employers that if they violate workers rights and the law, they can expect a fight.
"This is a message to the workers of America," said Vicente Rangel, the shop steward. "If we stand together, we will prevail until justice is done, and we get what we're due."
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
What you can do
If you live in the Chicago area, come to a rally on Saturday, December 6, at 12 Noon at Republic Windows, 1333 N. Hickory in Chicago, on Goose Island.
If negotiations with Bank of America fail to resolve the issue, there will be a picket of BoA's Chicago headquarters at 231 S. LaSalle on Tuesday, December 9 at 12 noon.
Members of Local 1110 need your support.
Make checks payable to the UE Local 1110 Solidarity Fund, and mail to:
37 S. Ashland, Chicago, IL 60607.
Messages of support can be sent to leahfried@gmail.com.
For more information, call UE at 312-829-8300.
At the Jobs with Justice Web site, you can send a message of protest to Bank of America (http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/bankofamerica/).
Workers occupy factory in Chicago
PWW newspaper
CHICAGO — Workers at Republic Windows and Doors in the Goose Island neighborhood began occupying the plant Friday morning Dec. 5 to regain pay for lost vacation days after the plant was abruptly closed.
They plan to continue the occupation until the results of the next round of negotiations with management on Dec. 8 are known.
Bank of America (BA) is chief investor and controls the day-to-day finances of Republic Windows and Doors, a manufacturer for the home construction market. BA refused to extend a line of credit and as a result the company was forced to close its doors December 5. Three hundred workers were thrown onto the street. This action came on the heels of a $25 billion emergency bailout of BA from the federal government.
On Dec. 3 100 Republic Windows workers, their families and supporters picketed BA Chicago headquarters on LaSalle Street. The workers, represented by United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) stretched a city block as they marched beneath the ornate bank columns and carried signs saying, “Billions for BA, $0 for workers” and “You got your bailout, we got sold out.”
According to Armando Robles, a maintenance employee and local union president, “Just weeks before Christmas we are told our factory will close in three days. Taxpayers gave Bank of America billions and they turn around and close our company. We will fight for a bailout for workers.”
The mostly Latino and African American workers are demanding at a minimum, the bank allow the company to pay worker vacation pay and other monies owned under WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act). BA instructed the company not to issue payments. In addition, the union is demanding the company comply with the requirement to give 60 days notice before closure of a workplace or 60 days pay in lieu of notice.
But the union believes the jobs can be saved. The company has said the closure is due to the deepening economic crisis and especially in the housing and construction industry. Orders have plummeted and according to the company, declining revenues would have ended in bankruptcy.
But according to a UE spokesperson, while the company’s new construction sales have suffered due to the slowdown, sales of replacement windows have remained steady. CEO Rich Gillman had just told the union that they company had customers willing to buy windows and they could stay in business if BA continued financing.
Observers say BA’s callousness is a clear example of the need for greater regulation of the bailouts being extended to Wall Street banks to prevent such outrageous acts of abuse.
Supporters can join a vigil Dec. 6 at noon and show their support for the workers by going to:
Republic Windows & Doors
1333 N. Hickory
On Goose Island,
near the intersection of Division & Clyborn.
Contact UE: ue@ranknfile-ue.org
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008480710_chicago08.html
Laid-off workers continue to occupy Chicago factory
Workers laid off Friday from Republic Windows and Doors, who for years
assembled vinyl windows and sliding doors here, said they would not leave,
even after company officials announced the factory was closing.
CHICAGO — The scene inside a long, low-slung factory on this city's North
Side this weekend offered a glimpse at how the nation's loss of more than
600,000 manufacturing jobs in a year of recession is boiling over.
Workers laid off Friday from Republic Windows and Doors, who for years
assembled vinyl windows and sliding doors here, said they would not leave,
even after company officials announced the factory was closing.
Some of the plant's 250 workers stayed all weekend in what they were
calling an occupation of the factory. Their sharpest criticisms were aimed
at their former bosses, who they said gave them only three days' notice of
the closure, and the company's creditors.
But their anger extended to the government's costly corporate bailout
plans, which, they argued, had forgotten about regular workers.
"They want the poor person to stay down," said Silvia Mazon, 47, a mother
of two who worked as an assembler here for 13 years and said she had never
before been the sort to make a fuss.
"We're here and we're not going anywhere until we get what's fair and
what's ours. They thought they would get rid of us easily, but if we have
to be here for Christmas, it doesn't matter."
The workers, members of Local 1110 of the United Electrical, Radio and
Machine Workers of America, said they were owed vacation and severance pay
and did not receive the 60 days' notice of layoffs generally required by
federal law.
The workers voted Friday afternoon to stage the sit-in. Company officials,
who were no longer at the factory, did not return telephone or e-mail
messages. A meeting between the owners and workers was scheduled for today.
The workers' plight drew sympathy and support from President-elect Obama
and community leaders Sunday who called it a symbol of the nation's
financial disarray.
"I think that these workers, if they have earned these benefits and their
pay, then these companies need to follow through on those commitments,"
Obama said at a news conference elsewhere in Chicago.
The company, founded in 1965, once employed more than 700 people but had
struggled in recent months as home construction dipped, workers said.
Still, as they milled around the factory's entrance this weekend, some
workers said they doubted the company was really in financial straits, and
they suggested it would reopen elsewhere with cheaper costs and lower pay.
advertising
Others said managers had kept their struggles secret, at one point before
Thanksgiving removing heavy equipment in the middle of the night but
claiming, when asked about it, that all was well.
Workers also pointedly blamed Bank of America, a lender to Republic
Windows, saying the bank had prevented the company from paying them what
they were owed, particularly for vacation time accrued.
"Here the banks like Bank of America get a bailout, but workers cannot be
paid?" said Leah Fried, an organizer with the union workers. "The taxpayers
would like to see that bailout go toward saving jobs, not saving CEOs."
In a statement issued Saturday, Bank of America officials said they could
not comment on an individual client's situation because of confidentiality
obligations.
Still, a spokeswoman also said, "Neither Bank of America nor any other
third-party lender to the company has the right to control whether the
company complies with applicable laws or honors its commitments to its
employees."
Inside the factory, the "occupation" was relatively quiet. Chicago police
said they were monitoring the situation but had no reports of a criminal
matter to investigate. About 30 workers sat in folding chairs. They came in
shifts around the clock. They tidied things. They shoveled snow. They met
with visiting leaders, including U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from
Chicago, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who brought turkeys and groceries to
them Sunday.
Throughout the weekend, people came with donations of food, water and other
supplies.
Many employees said they had worked in the factory for decades. Lalo Munoz
said he arrived 34 years ago.
The workers — about 80 percent of them Hispanic, with the rest black or
of other ethnic and national backgrounds — made $14 an hour on average
and received health-care and retirement benefits, Fried said.
The workers said they were determined to keep their action — reminiscent,
union leaders said, of autoworkers' efforts in Michigan in the 1930s —
peaceful and to preserve the factory and its equipment.
"The fact is that workers really feel like they have nothing to lose at
this point," Fried said.
"It shows something about our economic times and it says something about
how people feel about the bailout."
Friday, December 5, 2008
Save the Jeep, Save the Nation
Save the Jeep, Save the Nation
By Leo Gerard
December 5th, 2008 - 12:15pm ET
In 1941, car manufacturer Willys-Overland demonstrated the strength and sturdiness of its new Army scout vehicle — the Jeep — to Congress by driving it up the U.S. Capitol steps.
Invented and manufactured in the USA, the Jeep would become an icon of American ingenuity, durability and mechanical ability. Soldiers loved the lithe little vehicle for its uncanny capacity to go anywhere. The New York Museum of Modern Art would exhibit it in 2002 and describe it as a masterpiece of functional design. Now it’s 58 and constructed by United Auto Workers for Chrysler in Toledo, Ohio.
Disregarding Jeep’s help in securing this country against fascists, conservatives like former Republican Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney are calling for its execution. Romney and his conservative compatriots want Congress to deny Chrysler, GM and Ford federal loans so that the Big Three go bankrupt. Using false wage information, these conservatives have persuaded the public that auto workers are overpaid. That has resulted in polls showing 61 percent of Americans oppose aid to the Big Three. And now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is saying he fears he can’t muster the votes necessary for a loan.
Congress cannot let the Jeep die in bankruptcy. Congress must not fail the U.S. auto industry. Doing so would be abandoning the core of the American economy — manufacturing. America is not built on Wall Street’s credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. Its wealth and culture are built on and built by middle class workers who construct actual products like steel beams, tires and Jeeps, who operate and repair machines that pull oil and coal out of the ground, who log trees and man the mills that convert them into paper.
Just after the end of World War II, when the Jeep first became a civilian vehicle, 35 percent of workers belonged to labor unions. That’s significant because union members earn 30 percent higher wages than non-union workers and are 59 percent more likely to have health insurance. Those better wages and benefits helped create the great middle class in America. Workers earned enough money to buy refrigerators and homes and cars and, later, college educations for their children. The money they earned and spent churned through the economy and kept it humming.
But over the next half century, union membership declined. So it is only about 12 percent now. Business and industry groups intent on the extinction of unions can claim credit for a good part of that. These are the same organizations that are today misleading the public about auto worker wages, claiming they make $70 an hour when it’s really $28. They’re the same ones advocating auto company bankruptcy because it would allow the Big Three to renege on their contractual promises to workers and to retirees. They criticize auto workers for making a decent living, $28 an hour plus health benefits and a pension. And they denigrate the companies for being decent corporate citizens and fulfilling their health care and pension promises to retirees.
Over the past half century, multinational corporations have shipped a significant number of those good-paying union jobs overseas. With the help of wrong-headed federal policy that encouraged it, the U.S. lost an average of 12,000 manufacturing jobs per month since 1980. Since May this year, the average has been nearly 60,000. Multinational corporations sought cheap labor and lax environmental regulations in places like China and Indonesia, in what has become an international wage race to the bottom. Americans supposedly benefit from the import of cheap goods. But unemployed workers can’t afford to buy them.
Along with the decline in jobs and union membership came a reduction in the rate of personal savings and an increase in household debt. The financial situation of the typical American family became increasingly precarious even as, over the past 25 years, the very richest one tenth of one percent accrued more and more wealth. These were the kind of guys involved in short-selling — a practice through which a person owns nothing but makes money by betting that a stock will lose value — and by selling sub-prime mortgage-backed securities. These were the kind of know-it-all Wall Street risk takers who gave themselves $30 billion in bonuses last Christmas.
You know what happened next. Three months after those bonuses the initial investment bank fell. Bear Stearns got the first big federal bailout in March. Then other financial institutions and a gigantic insurance company involved in the subprime speculation toppled: AIG, Washington Mutual, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Lehman Brothers. Congress quickly offered up $700 billion to save financial institutions, and giant Citigroup took $25 billion of that in October and another $20 billion in November trying to stave off bankruptcy.
Congress used taxpayer dollars — working people’s money — to save those year-end-bonus awardees on Wall Street. Then it stiffed the working stiff. So far, there’s been talk, but no actual help for millions facing foreclosure. And while unemployment is rising, Congress is dithering over the Big Three’s request for a loan that could save millions of auto worker and support industry jobs.
Unemployment increased to 6.5 percent in October, after nearly a quarter million people got thrown out of work in just those 31 days. Over the past 12 months, 2.8 million people lost their jobs. And finally, what every one of them already knew was officially declared earlier this week — the country has been in a recession for a year.
This nation clearly can’t survive on what is produced by Wall Street — reckless speculation. That took America down.
This country should not be spending all of its financial resources salvaging those who destroyed the economy. America needs to invest in what works — its people. Congress must provide mortgage relief. But, most urgently, it’s crucial that we re-invigorate our manufacturing base. America must be able to actually produce products. Swapping paper is not enough to sustain a strong and stable middle class that will save money and buy cars and homes.
The Jeep helped us win World War II. What has Wall Street actually done for you? Saving the Jeep — and Chrysler, GM and Ford — would be a symbol that America understands manufacturing is key to a strong economy and financially brawny workers.
Jeep owners should let Congress know they’re prepared to drive up the Capitol steps to support loans for the Big Three and investment in American manufacturing.
By Leo Gerard
December 5th, 2008 - 12:15pm ET
In 1941, car manufacturer Willys-Overland demonstrated the strength and sturdiness of its new Army scout vehicle — the Jeep — to Congress by driving it up the U.S. Capitol steps.
Invented and manufactured in the USA, the Jeep would become an icon of American ingenuity, durability and mechanical ability. Soldiers loved the lithe little vehicle for its uncanny capacity to go anywhere. The New York Museum of Modern Art would exhibit it in 2002 and describe it as a masterpiece of functional design. Now it’s 58 and constructed by United Auto Workers for Chrysler in Toledo, Ohio.
Disregarding Jeep’s help in securing this country against fascists, conservatives like former Republican Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney are calling for its execution. Romney and his conservative compatriots want Congress to deny Chrysler, GM and Ford federal loans so that the Big Three go bankrupt. Using false wage information, these conservatives have persuaded the public that auto workers are overpaid. That has resulted in polls showing 61 percent of Americans oppose aid to the Big Three. And now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is saying he fears he can’t muster the votes necessary for a loan.
Congress cannot let the Jeep die in bankruptcy. Congress must not fail the U.S. auto industry. Doing so would be abandoning the core of the American economy — manufacturing. America is not built on Wall Street’s credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. Its wealth and culture are built on and built by middle class workers who construct actual products like steel beams, tires and Jeeps, who operate and repair machines that pull oil and coal out of the ground, who log trees and man the mills that convert them into paper.
Just after the end of World War II, when the Jeep first became a civilian vehicle, 35 percent of workers belonged to labor unions. That’s significant because union members earn 30 percent higher wages than non-union workers and are 59 percent more likely to have health insurance. Those better wages and benefits helped create the great middle class in America. Workers earned enough money to buy refrigerators and homes and cars and, later, college educations for their children. The money they earned and spent churned through the economy and kept it humming.
But over the next half century, union membership declined. So it is only about 12 percent now. Business and industry groups intent on the extinction of unions can claim credit for a good part of that. These are the same organizations that are today misleading the public about auto worker wages, claiming they make $70 an hour when it’s really $28. They’re the same ones advocating auto company bankruptcy because it would allow the Big Three to renege on their contractual promises to workers and to retirees. They criticize auto workers for making a decent living, $28 an hour plus health benefits and a pension. And they denigrate the companies for being decent corporate citizens and fulfilling their health care and pension promises to retirees.
Over the past half century, multinational corporations have shipped a significant number of those good-paying union jobs overseas. With the help of wrong-headed federal policy that encouraged it, the U.S. lost an average of 12,000 manufacturing jobs per month since 1980. Since May this year, the average has been nearly 60,000. Multinational corporations sought cheap labor and lax environmental regulations in places like China and Indonesia, in what has become an international wage race to the bottom. Americans supposedly benefit from the import of cheap goods. But unemployed workers can’t afford to buy them.
Along with the decline in jobs and union membership came a reduction in the rate of personal savings and an increase in household debt. The financial situation of the typical American family became increasingly precarious even as, over the past 25 years, the very richest one tenth of one percent accrued more and more wealth. These were the kind of guys involved in short-selling — a practice through which a person owns nothing but makes money by betting that a stock will lose value — and by selling sub-prime mortgage-backed securities. These were the kind of know-it-all Wall Street risk takers who gave themselves $30 billion in bonuses last Christmas.
You know what happened next. Three months after those bonuses the initial investment bank fell. Bear Stearns got the first big federal bailout in March. Then other financial institutions and a gigantic insurance company involved in the subprime speculation toppled: AIG, Washington Mutual, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Lehman Brothers. Congress quickly offered up $700 billion to save financial institutions, and giant Citigroup took $25 billion of that in October and another $20 billion in November trying to stave off bankruptcy.
Congress used taxpayer dollars — working people’s money — to save those year-end-bonus awardees on Wall Street. Then it stiffed the working stiff. So far, there’s been talk, but no actual help for millions facing foreclosure. And while unemployment is rising, Congress is dithering over the Big Three’s request for a loan that could save millions of auto worker and support industry jobs.
Unemployment increased to 6.5 percent in October, after nearly a quarter million people got thrown out of work in just those 31 days. Over the past 12 months, 2.8 million people lost their jobs. And finally, what every one of them already knew was officially declared earlier this week — the country has been in a recession for a year.
This nation clearly can’t survive on what is produced by Wall Street — reckless speculation. That took America down.
This country should not be spending all of its financial resources salvaging those who destroyed the economy. America needs to invest in what works — its people. Congress must provide mortgage relief. But, most urgently, it’s crucial that we re-invigorate our manufacturing base. America must be able to actually produce products. Swapping paper is not enough to sustain a strong and stable middle class that will save money and buy cars and homes.
The Jeep helped us win World War II. What has Wall Street actually done for you? Saving the Jeep — and Chrysler, GM and Ford — would be a symbol that America understands manufacturing is key to a strong economy and financially brawny workers.
Jeep owners should let Congress know they’re prepared to drive up the Capitol steps to support loans for the Big Three and investment in American manufacturing.
Response from Alan Maki:
Tax-payers can buy up the entire auto industry for a real bargain--- much less than the cost of a bailout that will most likely end up with an auto industry in collapse like the capitalist system itself; why should tax-payers subsidize what they are not going to own?
The "free marketers" are always complaining about school children getting free lunches and now these same capitalist soothsayers are telling us we need to bailout the auto industry as politicians treat these Big Three CEO's to free lunches on us wen they come begging for a bailout.
I say let these greedy pigs go down and we can pick up the plants and equipment for a real bargain.
With a nationalized auto industry we can put even more people back to work building environmentally friendly transportation which will help us solve the problem of global warming.
Where were you when progressive Minnesota legislators came up with a plan to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant?
We now need federal legislation modeled after Minnesota S.F. 607 which would keep all the components of an industrial manufacturing plant intact until it can be figured out how to put it back into operation.
I don't see any city, county, state or federal government employees or teachers complaining they get their pay checks from the government; I don't think auto workers would mind either. If a few do, so what, let them go find someplace else to work--- there are plenty of people who would be thrilled to be working in a publicly owned nationalized automobile industry.
Liberalism's Long Goodbye
This is an interesting response to George McGovern's recent attacks on organized labor. What has motivated McGovern to express such views is hard to say. Jerry Tucker does a reasonably good job in taking McGovern to task.
However, Tucker's own positions could use a little critiquing,too.
Tucker has, himself, been slow to come around to the realities of the class struggle.
For instance, a couple years ago he spoke to a gathering of working class studies teachers, instructors and professors in St. Paul, Minnesota and didn't even have the courage to comment on the closing of the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant only a short distance from McCallester College where he was part of a labor panel.
This really isn't much different from what Tucker criticizes George McGovern for. Tucker was also speaking in a state where more than thirty-thousand Minnesotans go to work in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws... again, silence from Tucker, who, as a matter of fact was sitting on the UAW's International Board at the time the "Compacts" creating the Indian Gaming Industry were brought into existence for the express purpose of creating right-to-work-for-less without-any-rights colonies all across this country. Tucker turned his back and covered his ears and closed his eyes as this most disgraceful injustice occurred which gave a great deal of confidence to corporate America that the time was ripe to attack organized labor, an attack that Tucker now decries. But, still today, while helping to create the Center for Labor Renewal, not only does Jerry Tucker remain silent concerning the plight of some two-million casino workers employed in more than 450 casinos strung out across this country, so to does each of those whose names adorn the Center for Labor Renewal's website.
Apparently Jerry Tucker's brand of social democracy is also taking its good old time to exit the scene along with the "liberalism" he decries.
I bring this up not to rub Jerry Tucker's or anyone else's nose in the pile of shit they helped to create that has enabled Barack Obama to pass himself off, not only as a "liberal" but as a "progressive."
In the final analysis what really needs to be asked is what has happened to, "An injury to one is an injury to all" in the U.S. labor movement?
Tucker's own Center for Labor Renewal has not only missed the boat as he did years ago as these draconian "Compacts" were being brought into existence by the very Democratic Party politicians Tucker supported at the time; but, the Center for Labor Renewal and Tucker, is once again, is missing the boat on another issue, this time a problem plaguing his own industry--- auto--- by refusing to consider nationalization and public ownership as the only way to really defend the rights of auto workers that it has taken some ten decades--- one-hundred years--- to win as most of those rights are set to be taken away by the very same politicians who approve each and every "Compact" creating new casinos.
So, there is more than a little irony in Tucker's own thinking towards his (and my) old friend George McGovern.
Another way of looking at this is that a political system of which Tucker was an integral part of a major player has come back to haunt him and has taken a big bite out of his own ass... something Jerry Tucker may want to consider as he remains silent regarding the present destruction of the UAW now underway that will bring auto workers pretty much down to the level of--- surprise! surprise!--- casino workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry... and, Michigan's Governor, Jennifer Granholm--- backed to the hilt by the UAW, has told workers at the General Motors Stamping Plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan which is closing, that because she signed another one of these dirty, draconian "Compacts" creating the Gun Lake Casino a few miles down the road from this plant, these auto workers will still have jobs!
Jerry Tucker might want to study up on the political views held by the founders of the United Auto Worker's Union... those like William Z. Foster, Earl Browder, Wyndham Mortimer, Bud Simons, Bob Travis, Phil Raymond, Nadia Barkan and Leon Sompolinsky. It wouldn't hurt for Tucker's buddy Gregg Shotwell to learn a little real history about his union, too.
Anyways, Jerry Tucker's response to George McGovern makes for some interesting reading--- keeping in mind there is more than a enough hypocrisy to go around as casino workers know all so well.
In fact, Jerry Tucker might want to give Nadine Nosal a call and find out what the score is on the Gun Lake Casino Compact now held up in the Michigan legislature for over a year... after all, it might not take much more than some action coming from the Center for Labor Renewal to get this "Compact" sent back to Governor Granholm and the Gun Lake Band for renegotiation for the rights of casino workers to be protected... and this would be protecting the rights of auto workers now losing their jobs to the closing of the GM Stamping Plant in Grand Rapids who will for sure be among the 2,000 Gun Lake Casino workers.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Liberalism's Long Goodbye
By: Jerry Tucker
(published in mrzine.monthlyreview.org)
by Jerry Tucker
Former Senator and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern's recent commentary on labor "The End of 'More'" (Los Angeles Times, 22 May 2006), albeit apologetically, confirms that liberal orthodoxy is on the side of telling U.S. workers and working-class communities to quit struggling against the tide of "a new competitive reality." But whose reality is it? Telling workers that they are asking for too much without a corresponding analysis of the increasing inequity of wealth division in this country further debunks the myth that the United States doesn't have a class system.
As someone who in 1972 co-chaired a state labor committee for McGovern's presidential candidacy (while the AFL-CIO's George Meany withheld support) and in the late 1970s called on him in his Senate office to affirm support for key labor and social issues, I can think of many public figures more in need of criticism than George McGovern, but the distorted conclusion of his commentary leave little choice.
It's too bad that a man of McGovern's acknowledged compassion, history of dissent against reckless imperialism, and championship of worker rights feels obligated to help hoist American liberalism's flag of surrender to global capital. It has become the typical response of liberal Democrats and most U.S. labor leaders, when they come up against corporate America's definition of "reality," not to challenge it but to adjust to it.
Victims of today's relentless corporate assault, such as Delphi workers, will find it hard to forgive the former Senator for his misrepresentation of the historical definition of "more." That call for "more" -- actually issued by AFL President Samuel Gompers, not John L. Lewis to whom McGovern attributes it -- not only spoke to "more" wages, but also "more" education, healthcare, access to leisure and culture. It was about the quality of life for workers, what today's robber barons clearly view as a removable obstacle on their path to unfettered wealth accumulation.
For workers, the dog-eat-dog, race-to-the-bottom economic model now being touted as the "new competitive reality" has all the social validity of a epidemic for which only the elite have access to a vaccine. The shakeouts in the domestic auto industry are only the latest in a continuous pattern of corporate restructuring -- i.e. ongoing, neo-liberal attacks on workers -- which now features refashioned bankruptcy laws to eliminate gains won through collective bargaining. Indeed, reckless corporate bankruptcy filings have been turned into Damoclesian Swords over workers and communities.
For a generation now, workers have been asked to make sacrifices to gain security in a better future that never comes. Corporations on the other hand have gotten pretty much everything they've asked. Isn't it about time that we have a national discussion on the amazing disconnect between the remarkable economic success of the American economy we hear so much about and the argument -- reiterated by McGovern in his op-ed -- that workers must lower their expectations? The corporations have gotten what they asked for and haven't delivered. Isn't it their credibility that we should be focusing on, rather than criticizing workers for trying to hang on to what they have? What is it about our society -- about how power is allocated and priorities set in it -- that has made technology a threat to our wellbeing instead of a liberating force?
Liberals have long since abandoned their supposed "core principle" of justice and equality as they continue to ignore rising economic injustice and inequality. Guided by what Wall Street wants, not the very real needs of a majority of working Americans, they are left to shill for the companies and the system that enriches them by appealing to workers to be "more realistic."
The new "realism" leaves out the fact that "US companies have increased their share of the economic pie at a faster rate over the past five years than at any time since the Second World War. Recent government figures show that profits from current production as a share of national income have risen from 7 per cent in mid-2001 to 12.2 per cent at the start of this year. This rate of growth is unprecedented since collection of these figures began in 1947" (Financial Times, 4 June 2006). To the millions of workers being asked to sacrifice to accommodate this new "realism," it seems that compassionate conservatism and conservative liberalism are increasingly offering the same fake medicine.
While the former Senator restates his support for a universal health care plan, he offers it as a "supplement to income" that may help bring down the wages of workers he has already characterized as too high, more as "a way of relieving hard-pressed businesses" than as a way of lifting the catastrophic burden on the millions of uninsured and underinsured in and out of U.S. workplaces.
McGovrn labels the union leaders who openly accept the conclusion of his commentary "progressive." But the opinion that carries the most weight on the conduct and effectiveness of politically insulated national union leaders belongs to the dues-paying members of their unions. By a wide margin, workers faced with incessant concession demands want a labor movement that aggregates its power to repel attacks on their hard-won gains and fights for greater social distribution of those gains. Labor leaders calling for partnership with a corporate elite presiding over a new era of "wealth accumulation by dispossession" are regarded by those workers not as progressives but as accomplices.
Ironically, the former Senator bemoans "union leaders who still see American businesses as the enemy," but it's the workers, not union leaders, who have come to see businesses as the enemy . . . and with good cause. Workers also see the evidence of corporate control of government, which expropriates their rights under the joint domination of the corporate and political elites, supported by both national political parties, including the liberal wing of the Democrats.
Equally ironic is the gentle defense that Wal Mart-ism, if not the company itself, gets in McGovern's plea for worker realism and consignment to "less." Essentially, McGovern is telling us that the Democratic Party, on their best day, has nothing to offer.
Despite what the corporate and political elites, and much of the labor leadership, are telling us about the need to accept the "new competitive reality," acceptance of its legitimacy, for the U.S. working class, is acceptance of a downward economic spiral from which there is no recovery. What workers -- union and non-union, immigrant and native-born alike -- really need, instead, is resistance and the renewal of those collective institutions delegated by history to outfit the struggle for social and economic justice -- a class struggle-based labor movement and a political party representing the interests of workers, not the interest of the bosses.
To any extent McGovern is right, his logic suggests a quite different conclusion than asking for "less." If this is the best American capitalism has to offer, maybe it's the system, not workers' expectations, that has to be changed?
---
Jerry Tucker is a former Intl UAW Executive Board Member and is an Initiating Co-convenor of the new national Center for Labor Renewal.
Post a Comment About this Article.
However, Tucker's own positions could use a little critiquing,too.
Tucker has, himself, been slow to come around to the realities of the class struggle.
For instance, a couple years ago he spoke to a gathering of working class studies teachers, instructors and professors in St. Paul, Minnesota and didn't even have the courage to comment on the closing of the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant only a short distance from McCallester College where he was part of a labor panel.
This really isn't much different from what Tucker criticizes George McGovern for. Tucker was also speaking in a state where more than thirty-thousand Minnesotans go to work in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws... again, silence from Tucker, who, as a matter of fact was sitting on the UAW's International Board at the time the "Compacts" creating the Indian Gaming Industry were brought into existence for the express purpose of creating right-to-work-for-less without-any-rights colonies all across this country. Tucker turned his back and covered his ears and closed his eyes as this most disgraceful injustice occurred which gave a great deal of confidence to corporate America that the time was ripe to attack organized labor, an attack that Tucker now decries. But, still today, while helping to create the Center for Labor Renewal, not only does Jerry Tucker remain silent concerning the plight of some two-million casino workers employed in more than 450 casinos strung out across this country, so to does each of those whose names adorn the Center for Labor Renewal's website.
Apparently Jerry Tucker's brand of social democracy is also taking its good old time to exit the scene along with the "liberalism" he decries.
I bring this up not to rub Jerry Tucker's or anyone else's nose in the pile of shit they helped to create that has enabled Barack Obama to pass himself off, not only as a "liberal" but as a "progressive."
In the final analysis what really needs to be asked is what has happened to, "An injury to one is an injury to all" in the U.S. labor movement?
Tucker's own Center for Labor Renewal has not only missed the boat as he did years ago as these draconian "Compacts" were being brought into existence by the very Democratic Party politicians Tucker supported at the time; but, the Center for Labor Renewal and Tucker, is once again, is missing the boat on another issue, this time a problem plaguing his own industry--- auto--- by refusing to consider nationalization and public ownership as the only way to really defend the rights of auto workers that it has taken some ten decades--- one-hundred years--- to win as most of those rights are set to be taken away by the very same politicians who approve each and every "Compact" creating new casinos.
So, there is more than a little irony in Tucker's own thinking towards his (and my) old friend George McGovern.
Another way of looking at this is that a political system of which Tucker was an integral part of a major player has come back to haunt him and has taken a big bite out of his own ass... something Jerry Tucker may want to consider as he remains silent regarding the present destruction of the UAW now underway that will bring auto workers pretty much down to the level of--- surprise! surprise!--- casino workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry... and, Michigan's Governor, Jennifer Granholm--- backed to the hilt by the UAW, has told workers at the General Motors Stamping Plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan which is closing, that because she signed another one of these dirty, draconian "Compacts" creating the Gun Lake Casino a few miles down the road from this plant, these auto workers will still have jobs!
Jerry Tucker might want to study up on the political views held by the founders of the United Auto Worker's Union... those like William Z. Foster, Earl Browder, Wyndham Mortimer, Bud Simons, Bob Travis, Phil Raymond, Nadia Barkan and Leon Sompolinsky. It wouldn't hurt for Tucker's buddy Gregg Shotwell to learn a little real history about his union, too.
Anyways, Jerry Tucker's response to George McGovern makes for some interesting reading--- keeping in mind there is more than a enough hypocrisy to go around as casino workers know all so well.
In fact, Jerry Tucker might want to give Nadine Nosal a call and find out what the score is on the Gun Lake Casino Compact now held up in the Michigan legislature for over a year... after all, it might not take much more than some action coming from the Center for Labor Renewal to get this "Compact" sent back to Governor Granholm and the Gun Lake Band for renegotiation for the rights of casino workers to be protected... and this would be protecting the rights of auto workers now losing their jobs to the closing of the GM Stamping Plant in Grand Rapids who will for sure be among the 2,000 Gun Lake Casino workers.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Liberalism's Long Goodbye
By: Jerry Tucker
(published in mrzine.monthlyreview.org)
by Jerry Tucker
Former Senator and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern's recent commentary on labor "The End of 'More'" (Los Angeles Times, 22 May 2006), albeit apologetically, confirms that liberal orthodoxy is on the side of telling U.S. workers and working-class communities to quit struggling against the tide of "a new competitive reality." But whose reality is it? Telling workers that they are asking for too much without a corresponding analysis of the increasing inequity of wealth division in this country further debunks the myth that the United States doesn't have a class system.
As someone who in 1972 co-chaired a state labor committee for McGovern's presidential candidacy (while the AFL-CIO's George Meany withheld support) and in the late 1970s called on him in his Senate office to affirm support for key labor and social issues, I can think of many public figures more in need of criticism than George McGovern, but the distorted conclusion of his commentary leave little choice.
It's too bad that a man of McGovern's acknowledged compassion, history of dissent against reckless imperialism, and championship of worker rights feels obligated to help hoist American liberalism's flag of surrender to global capital. It has become the typical response of liberal Democrats and most U.S. labor leaders, when they come up against corporate America's definition of "reality," not to challenge it but to adjust to it.
Victims of today's relentless corporate assault, such as Delphi workers, will find it hard to forgive the former Senator for his misrepresentation of the historical definition of "more." That call for "more" -- actually issued by AFL President Samuel Gompers, not John L. Lewis to whom McGovern attributes it -- not only spoke to "more" wages, but also "more" education, healthcare, access to leisure and culture. It was about the quality of life for workers, what today's robber barons clearly view as a removable obstacle on their path to unfettered wealth accumulation.
For workers, the dog-eat-dog, race-to-the-bottom economic model now being touted as the "new competitive reality" has all the social validity of a epidemic for which only the elite have access to a vaccine. The shakeouts in the domestic auto industry are only the latest in a continuous pattern of corporate restructuring -- i.e. ongoing, neo-liberal attacks on workers -- which now features refashioned bankruptcy laws to eliminate gains won through collective bargaining. Indeed, reckless corporate bankruptcy filings have been turned into Damoclesian Swords over workers and communities.
For a generation now, workers have been asked to make sacrifices to gain security in a better future that never comes. Corporations on the other hand have gotten pretty much everything they've asked. Isn't it about time that we have a national discussion on the amazing disconnect between the remarkable economic success of the American economy we hear so much about and the argument -- reiterated by McGovern in his op-ed -- that workers must lower their expectations? The corporations have gotten what they asked for and haven't delivered. Isn't it their credibility that we should be focusing on, rather than criticizing workers for trying to hang on to what they have? What is it about our society -- about how power is allocated and priorities set in it -- that has made technology a threat to our wellbeing instead of a liberating force?
Liberals have long since abandoned their supposed "core principle" of justice and equality as they continue to ignore rising economic injustice and inequality. Guided by what Wall Street wants, not the very real needs of a majority of working Americans, they are left to shill for the companies and the system that enriches them by appealing to workers to be "more realistic."
The new "realism" leaves out the fact that "US companies have increased their share of the economic pie at a faster rate over the past five years than at any time since the Second World War. Recent government figures show that profits from current production as a share of national income have risen from 7 per cent in mid-2001 to 12.2 per cent at the start of this year. This rate of growth is unprecedented since collection of these figures began in 1947" (Financial Times, 4 June 2006). To the millions of workers being asked to sacrifice to accommodate this new "realism," it seems that compassionate conservatism and conservative liberalism are increasingly offering the same fake medicine.
While the former Senator restates his support for a universal health care plan, he offers it as a "supplement to income" that may help bring down the wages of workers he has already characterized as too high, more as "a way of relieving hard-pressed businesses" than as a way of lifting the catastrophic burden on the millions of uninsured and underinsured in and out of U.S. workplaces.
McGovrn labels the union leaders who openly accept the conclusion of his commentary "progressive." But the opinion that carries the most weight on the conduct and effectiveness of politically insulated national union leaders belongs to the dues-paying members of their unions. By a wide margin, workers faced with incessant concession demands want a labor movement that aggregates its power to repel attacks on their hard-won gains and fights for greater social distribution of those gains. Labor leaders calling for partnership with a corporate elite presiding over a new era of "wealth accumulation by dispossession" are regarded by those workers not as progressives but as accomplices.
Ironically, the former Senator bemoans "union leaders who still see American businesses as the enemy," but it's the workers, not union leaders, who have come to see businesses as the enemy . . . and with good cause. Workers also see the evidence of corporate control of government, which expropriates their rights under the joint domination of the corporate and political elites, supported by both national political parties, including the liberal wing of the Democrats.
Equally ironic is the gentle defense that Wal Mart-ism, if not the company itself, gets in McGovern's plea for worker realism and consignment to "less." Essentially, McGovern is telling us that the Democratic Party, on their best day, has nothing to offer.
Despite what the corporate and political elites, and much of the labor leadership, are telling us about the need to accept the "new competitive reality," acceptance of its legitimacy, for the U.S. working class, is acceptance of a downward economic spiral from which there is no recovery. What workers -- union and non-union, immigrant and native-born alike -- really need, instead, is resistance and the renewal of those collective institutions delegated by history to outfit the struggle for social and economic justice -- a class struggle-based labor movement and a political party representing the interests of workers, not the interest of the bosses.
To any extent McGovern is right, his logic suggests a quite different conclusion than asking for "less." If this is the best American capitalism has to offer, maybe it's the system, not workers' expectations, that has to be changed?
---
Jerry Tucker is a former Intl UAW Executive Board Member and is an Initiating Co-convenor of the new national Center for Labor Renewal.
Post a Comment About this Article.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Make way for the working class to have a say…
This enormous economic mess we are now experiencing, along with the heavy debt the bankers and the politicians of both major political parties have saddled us with, can be summed up very simply: The capitalists have taken all the profits and left the working class with all the problems.
There are only two sources of wealth: Labor and Mother Nature.
Anyone with an ounce of common sense understands that if you allow labor to be continually exploited and Mother Nature to be repeatedly abused and raped there will be severe consequences.
We are now reaping the consequences for allowing this parasitical monster of state-monopoly capitalism to have spun its web of corruption in the form of a cannibalistic military-financial-industrial complex which now threatens to consume and destroy our families, our communities, our State and our Nation while wreaking havoc in other lands.
Enough!
The time has come to put the needs of people before corporate profits.
There is only one alternative; for working people to come together to build a new society on the foundation created by the socialists of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party.
We need to fight and struggle to re-establish the liberal, democratic and progressive socialist traditions for which Minnesota is known around the world.
We have complex problems before us… but, any country which can spend trillions of dollars on wars to steal the oil of other nations, and trillions of dollars bailing out corporations and bankers looking for using socialism to solve the problems of their own creation as they have sought to prop up their rotten capitalist system--- which they have touted to the world as being the best--- at our expense… This Nation can now come up with the resources to use socialism to solve the problems for the rest of us, too.
What is good for the goose is, in this case, is even better for the gander.
Let Barack Obama and John McCain volunteer to go off exploring the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for Osama Bin Laden; we have better things to do.
Our first priority is to end these dirty wars for oil and redeploy those funds--- as we bring home the troops--- to creating a world class socialized health care system which will create millions of new jobs; five messes the money-grubbing Wall Street coupon clippers and their bought and paid for politicians created, all solved at the same time by ending these dirty imperialist wars for oil and regional domination--- we get health care not warfare, and we begin to solve the problem of unemployment--- and when we put people to work in this way we begin to create a new--- functioning--- people oriented, cooperative, socialist economy where democracy will flourish because it will require the full participation and involvement of all people working together in order to succeed.
Second, without further delay, we need to establish the State Bank of Minnesota to accomplish for our State what the State Bank of North Dakota was set up, by workers and farmers, to do--- fund enterprises to keep people working.
Third, we need a minimum wage which is a real living wage arrived at by the calculations of the United States Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics in cooperation with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development--- based upon the real figures relating to the real cost of living and this minimum wage should be required by legislation to be updated quarterly right along with the release of all economic indicators to assure a quality life and decent standard of living for all working people and their families.
We have finally come to the point where even the parasitic bankers and the exploiting industrialists now concede that only socialism can bail them out of this horrible mess and solve their problems... capitalism has reached the end of the line and the only thing now to be had from the system is unending human misery.
At the point where society has to pay to clean up the corrupt mess these parasitic predatory lenders and financial institutions have created, this is the time to say:
Enough!
What tax-payers finance, tax-payers must own.
If Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs do not like these terms, these greedy pigs should make the trip to their off-shore banks in the Cayman Islands and make withdrawals from their accounts to pay to solve their own problems.
The time has come to roll up our sleeves, come together, and get to work quickly before this entire rotten system collapses---like the I35-W Bridge--- and crushes us all while leaving our children and grandchildren with the clean-up and the bills.
I firmly believe working people can run our country and our state better than any of the big-business politicians being funded by the corporate lobbyists.
Effectively using the tools of public ownership and nationalization combined with modern, scientific planning for the common good, we can put people to work in decent jobs at real living wages... we hear it all the time just before Election Day: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs... but we never see the jobs, and if we do, these jobs are poverty wage jobs no one can live on.
I intend to run for Governor of Minnesota in 2010.
I invite all working people who think that it is possible to create something better than the mess we are now in, to come together and work from where socialist Governors Floyd B. Olson and Elmer A. Benson left off in trying to create a just and decent society where people live and work in harmony with Mother Nature, to join with me, in establishing the Minnesota Party to give the bankers, the mining, forestry and power generating industries along with the industrialists and big-agribusiness a real run for their money.
Let’s run these parasites that have been living off of our labor and destroying Mother Nature right out of our state. We can get along just fine--- even better--- without them.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
and
Candidate for Governor of Minnesota
Former member: Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party State Central Committee
There are only two sources of wealth: Labor and Mother Nature.
Anyone with an ounce of common sense understands that if you allow labor to be continually exploited and Mother Nature to be repeatedly abused and raped there will be severe consequences.
We are now reaping the consequences for allowing this parasitical monster of state-monopoly capitalism to have spun its web of corruption in the form of a cannibalistic military-financial-industrial complex which now threatens to consume and destroy our families, our communities, our State and our Nation while wreaking havoc in other lands.
Enough!
The time has come to put the needs of people before corporate profits.
There is only one alternative; for working people to come together to build a new society on the foundation created by the socialists of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party.
We need to fight and struggle to re-establish the liberal, democratic and progressive socialist traditions for which Minnesota is known around the world.
We have complex problems before us… but, any country which can spend trillions of dollars on wars to steal the oil of other nations, and trillions of dollars bailing out corporations and bankers looking for using socialism to solve the problems of their own creation as they have sought to prop up their rotten capitalist system--- which they have touted to the world as being the best--- at our expense… This Nation can now come up with the resources to use socialism to solve the problems for the rest of us, too.
What is good for the goose is, in this case, is even better for the gander.
Let Barack Obama and John McCain volunteer to go off exploring the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for Osama Bin Laden; we have better things to do.
Our first priority is to end these dirty wars for oil and redeploy those funds--- as we bring home the troops--- to creating a world class socialized health care system which will create millions of new jobs; five messes the money-grubbing Wall Street coupon clippers and their bought and paid for politicians created, all solved at the same time by ending these dirty imperialist wars for oil and regional domination--- we get health care not warfare, and we begin to solve the problem of unemployment--- and when we put people to work in this way we begin to create a new--- functioning--- people oriented, cooperative, socialist economy where democracy will flourish because it will require the full participation and involvement of all people working together in order to succeed.
Second, without further delay, we need to establish the State Bank of Minnesota to accomplish for our State what the State Bank of North Dakota was set up, by workers and farmers, to do--- fund enterprises to keep people working.
Third, we need a minimum wage which is a real living wage arrived at by the calculations of the United States Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics in cooperation with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development--- based upon the real figures relating to the real cost of living and this minimum wage should be required by legislation to be updated quarterly right along with the release of all economic indicators to assure a quality life and decent standard of living for all working people and their families.
We have finally come to the point where even the parasitic bankers and the exploiting industrialists now concede that only socialism can bail them out of this horrible mess and solve their problems... capitalism has reached the end of the line and the only thing now to be had from the system is unending human misery.
At the point where society has to pay to clean up the corrupt mess these parasitic predatory lenders and financial institutions have created, this is the time to say:
Enough!
What tax-payers finance, tax-payers must own.
If Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs do not like these terms, these greedy pigs should make the trip to their off-shore banks in the Cayman Islands and make withdrawals from their accounts to pay to solve their own problems.
The time has come to roll up our sleeves, come together, and get to work quickly before this entire rotten system collapses---like the I35-W Bridge--- and crushes us all while leaving our children and grandchildren with the clean-up and the bills.
I firmly believe working people can run our country and our state better than any of the big-business politicians being funded by the corporate lobbyists.
Effectively using the tools of public ownership and nationalization combined with modern, scientific planning for the common good, we can put people to work in decent jobs at real living wages... we hear it all the time just before Election Day: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs... but we never see the jobs, and if we do, these jobs are poverty wage jobs no one can live on.
I intend to run for Governor of Minnesota in 2010.
I invite all working people who think that it is possible to create something better than the mess we are now in, to come together and work from where socialist Governors Floyd B. Olson and Elmer A. Benson left off in trying to create a just and decent society where people live and work in harmony with Mother Nature, to join with me, in establishing the Minnesota Party to give the bankers, the mining, forestry and power generating industries along with the industrialists and big-agribusiness a real run for their money.
Let’s run these parasites that have been living off of our labor and destroying Mother Nature right out of our state. We can get along just fine--- even better--- without them.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
and
Candidate for Governor of Minnesota
Former member: Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party State Central Committee
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
A Real Solution for our Economy
A Real Solution for our Economy
By Joe Wantz
October 7th, 2008 - 3:04pm ET
The national conversation has been focused squarely on the economy in the last several weeks, with pundits and experts breathlessly declaring a financial catastrophe of epic scale. Of course, those of us who live in the real world knew the economy has been in trouble far before Wall Street failed. We know people who had their house lost to foreclosure. We know people who have had their jobs outsourced or eliminated. We know people who work more than one job to pay the bills and support their families. And we know that something needs to change.
Change, however, cannot simply come from the top down. The financial market bailout may help to restore confidence on Wall Street, but does little to cure the many problems on Main Street. The average American worker needs more than assurances that once the financial markets are “fixed” that they will be taken care of. Workers truly need to have their own voice and determine their own economic destiny. One of the best ways to do that, of course, is through forming a union at work. Unfortunately, over the last thirty years, employers across the United States have cracked down on organizing, resulting in a decline of union membership. It comes as no surprise that during that time wages have stagnated, 47 million Americans have no health insurance, and foreclosures have skyrocketed out of control.
The Employee Free Choice Act is an important part of the fight to regain the American dream for millions of workers. It will level the playing field by giving employees a free and direct path to form unions, toughen penalties against employers who break the law, and help restore balance to our obsolete federal labor laws. Union members earn 30% more, have better access to health care and other benefits, and have greater job security. Let’s get the conversation back to where it belongs, on the well-being and strength of the American worker. It’s time our economy worked for everyone again.
The author works for American Rights at Work, www.americanrightsatwork.org
My response:
The Employee Free Choice Act
By Alan Maki | October 7th, 2008 - 4:59pm GMT
Mr. Wantz, you fail to mention that some twenty-eight states have "at-will hiring, at-will firing" legislation which makes the Employee Free Choice Act useless for workers in these twenty-eight states including the huge industrial state of Michigan and Minnesota.
You also fail to mention that the The Employee Free Choice Act will have no affect on some two-million casino workers employed at jobs in the Indian Gaming Industry who are forced to work in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws in spite of the fact that the "Compacts" creating this Indian Gaming Industry are the creations of state and federal governments.
These two-million workers employed under these Draconian conditions in the Indian Gaming Industry would, again, be excluded from The Employee Free Choice Act.
When is your organization, American Rights at Work going to acknowledge this problem and bring forward solutions.
As you are fully aware, the Democratic Governor of Michigan has just signed her signature to another one of these "Compacts" without insisting that the rights of workers be protected. Governor Granholm could have withheld her signature from this "Compact" and insisted that before she approved it, all laws regulating terms of employment and working conditions must be adhered to. I would note that the state and federal bureaucracies regulate the one-armed bandits and inspect these slot machines... certainly the lives of working people employed in these casinos are as important as the machines rigged to take in money.
December 10, 2008 marks the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights and here we have the Democratic Party touting the Employee Free Choice Act which, for all practical purposes will leave working people in twenty-eight states without protection from a piece of legislation claiming to aid workers in union organizing and some two-million workers employed in more than 450 casinos strung out across this country will have no rights at all... for whom The Employee Free Choice Act will be completely meaningless.
How would you suggest that these casino workers escape from poverty?
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
By Joe Wantz
October 7th, 2008 - 3:04pm ET
The national conversation has been focused squarely on the economy in the last several weeks, with pundits and experts breathlessly declaring a financial catastrophe of epic scale. Of course, those of us who live in the real world knew the economy has been in trouble far before Wall Street failed. We know people who had their house lost to foreclosure. We know people who have had their jobs outsourced or eliminated. We know people who work more than one job to pay the bills and support their families. And we know that something needs to change.
Change, however, cannot simply come from the top down. The financial market bailout may help to restore confidence on Wall Street, but does little to cure the many problems on Main Street. The average American worker needs more than assurances that once the financial markets are “fixed” that they will be taken care of. Workers truly need to have their own voice and determine their own economic destiny. One of the best ways to do that, of course, is through forming a union at work. Unfortunately, over the last thirty years, employers across the United States have cracked down on organizing, resulting in a decline of union membership. It comes as no surprise that during that time wages have stagnated, 47 million Americans have no health insurance, and foreclosures have skyrocketed out of control.
The Employee Free Choice Act is an important part of the fight to regain the American dream for millions of workers. It will level the playing field by giving employees a free and direct path to form unions, toughen penalties against employers who break the law, and help restore balance to our obsolete federal labor laws. Union members earn 30% more, have better access to health care and other benefits, and have greater job security. Let’s get the conversation back to where it belongs, on the well-being and strength of the American worker. It’s time our economy worked for everyone again.
The author works for American Rights at Work, www.americanrightsatwork.org
My response:
The Employee Free Choice Act
By Alan Maki | October 7th, 2008 - 4:59pm GMT
Mr. Wantz, you fail to mention that some twenty-eight states have "at-will hiring, at-will firing" legislation which makes the Employee Free Choice Act useless for workers in these twenty-eight states including the huge industrial state of Michigan and Minnesota.
You also fail to mention that the The Employee Free Choice Act will have no affect on some two-million casino workers employed at jobs in the Indian Gaming Industry who are forced to work in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws in spite of the fact that the "Compacts" creating this Indian Gaming Industry are the creations of state and federal governments.
These two-million workers employed under these Draconian conditions in the Indian Gaming Industry would, again, be excluded from The Employee Free Choice Act.
When is your organization, American Rights at Work going to acknowledge this problem and bring forward solutions.
As you are fully aware, the Democratic Governor of Michigan has just signed her signature to another one of these "Compacts" without insisting that the rights of workers be protected. Governor Granholm could have withheld her signature from this "Compact" and insisted that before she approved it, all laws regulating terms of employment and working conditions must be adhered to. I would note that the state and federal bureaucracies regulate the one-armed bandits and inspect these slot machines... certainly the lives of working people employed in these casinos are as important as the machines rigged to take in money.
December 10, 2008 marks the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights and here we have the Democratic Party touting the Employee Free Choice Act which, for all practical purposes will leave working people in twenty-eight states without protection from a piece of legislation claiming to aid workers in union organizing and some two-million workers employed in more than 450 casinos strung out across this country will have no rights at all... for whom The Employee Free Choice Act will be completely meaningless.
How would you suggest that these casino workers escape from poverty?
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
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