Support Local 6500 striking against Vale Inco

USW Local 6500 President John Fera & Sisters and Brothers of Local 6500,

Please find my blog posting in support of your struggle for justice.

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/sudbury-ontario-nickel-miners-prepare.html

If there is anything further I can do to help spread the word in support of your struggle for justice and dignity against Vale Inco, don’t hesitate to ask.

Appreciative of the generous support and solidarity my family and I received from the USW-Canada, Mine-Mill/CAW 598, Sudbury and District Labour Council, New Democratic Party-Sudbury, Communist Party of Canada-Sudbury and workers of the Sudbury Region as I fought deportation from Canada.

Local 6500 will win!

For international working class struggle and solidarity!

Remembering those like Jim Tester and Ray Stevenson who helped build and shape the labour movement in Sudbury and Ontario among the hard rock miners into powerful working class organizations capable of standing up to the likes of Vale Inco--- an arrogant, ruthless, multi-national corporation not content in stealing the natural resources from Canadians; but, then, in pursuit of greater maximum profits, shamefully insisting on driving down the standard of living of the very workers who create all wealth.

I add my voice to the just struggle of the members of USW Local 6500…

Yours in solidarity and 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/

Over two-million American workers are forced to work in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages in the Indian Gaming Industry without any rights under state or federal labor laws as a result of the Democrats entering into racist and anti-labor “Compacts” with a bunch of mobsters designed to increase casino profits by denying casino workers their rights as Democratic Party politicians reap millions of dollars in campaign contributions while poverty soars out of sight on Indian Reservations.

Please boycott all casinos that are part of the Indian Gaming Industry.



Re: Support for USW Local 6500 in Sudbury, Ontario on strike against Vale Inco...

info@fairdealnow.ca

To: amaki000@centurytel.net
Thank you for contacting us at www.fairdealnow.ca to express your interest and support for United Steelworkers strikers at Vale Inco’s Canadian operations. As USW Canadian National Director, I will communicate your support to our Canadian strikers.

I encourage you to continue to keep in touch with us. And please encourage your friends to visit us at www.fairdealnow.ca to stay up-to-date on the strike and related issues.

In solidarity,

Ken Neumann
USW National Director for Canada

A great idea... is there a way to put this in action?

I came across this article in an obscure publication on the Internet.

No doubt it remains just an idea with no organizational effort behind it... but, this doesn't mean that a group of people couldn't put something together and start to make things happen. This is the way many successful movements begin.

I have included some thoughts of my own following the article.

Perhaps others could add their own thoughts, post it to their own blogs and websites, write some letters to the editor, do some leafleting with the idea and put everything together on-line and in pamphlet form.

Alan L. Maki

Needed: Constitutional Amendment for the Right to a Earn a Living Wage

By John Henry

________________________________________

11-02-09

Introduction

The goal of full employment and the highest quality of life for all is at the heart of our struggle to make human rights more sacred than property interests. To accomplish this goal in the United States will take a mass, organized movement that through progressive stages and leaps reforms and ultimately revolutionizes our relations of production. An important aspect of this movement will be the legal forms that come to crystallize and institutionalize the fundamental economic changes won by the People.

The tactics and strategy in the economic struggle always necessarily include political and legislative goals. As our efforts address the most fundamental political economic issues, it is important that we have goals, strategy and tactics concerning the most fundamental law of the land, the Constitution, no matter how much the ruling class is above even that authority for now.

Why a right to a job: a historical materialist perspective

Historical materialists focus on the working class and class struggle as keys to revolutionary social change in this epoch. This is the perspective worked out by Engels and Marx which holds that social ideas, ideals and laws reflect and are ultimately determined, limited and changed by changes in the relations and forces of material production; and not quite equally so vice-versa. Thus, historical materialism sees Constitutional changes, like all legal change, as ultimately reflecting underlying class struggles. In our era of the bourgeoisie, we herald the rise of the working class to emancipate itself and all of the oppressed groups and despised classes (though taking longer than we thought!)

This approach sees that the US, connected with most of the globe more closely than ever, has capitalist relations of production. We have wage-labor and private ownership of the basic means of production.

The institution of wage-labor makes the need for a job fundamental for the overwhelming majority of the population, for they must work for a living. This institution of wage-labor means most people must sell their labor power to obtain the basic necessities of life, and avoid personal and social ills. It is not possible for most people to employ themselves in small, self-sufficient economic units and survive as they did in earlier societies. The economic system is highly socialized. That is it consists of a large number of interdependent economic enterprises of all sizes. This socialization of labor, or division of labor has reached a new qualitative level and is in some sense global today, for example with "world cars" and other commodities assembled from geographically scattered points of production.

The right to a job is a mature universal human right now. This is already recognized in Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and indirectly in the United Nations Charter Articles 55 and 56 on promoting full employment and Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The right to a job, or to earn a living, in a world wide web of wage-labor is central in the struggle for economic and human rights and to ameliorate human suffering. For, unemployment is a root cause of our most personal and social tribulations – poverty, hunger, homelessness, urban crisis, crime, suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction, physical and mental illness, wife abuse, child abuse and so on.

With the institution of wage-labor, the right to a job is also fundamental because the exercise of all other basic human rights and freedoms is dependent upon, first, fulfillment of the basic needs for material survival – food, shelter, health care, etc. A job is key to obtaining these. Modern citizens cannot speak, think, vote or travel freely if they cannot eat. They cannot obtain equality before the law or due process without legal counsel at costs. A job at a living wage is a prerequisite for a decent life and for the exercise of all other human rights and liberties. Institutionalized, continuous denial of work to millions of people, permanent mass unemployment (even four percent is mass unemployment) is a violation of a most critical human right undermining all of the human rights of those millions unemployed.

Unemployment is not a necessary part of an efficiently functioning modern industrial economy as many apologists for the American system claim. Rather unemployment is the result of an unplanned economy in which basic production is carried out with the goal of maximizing accumulation of profit for private corporations and individuals. Permanent mass unemployment is also a key tactic for keeping wages down by keeping the demand for jobs high in relation to the supply of jobs. If there were full employment, the bosses would have no scabs to hire to break strikes.

We need a mass movement to do it

The masses of people have a basic and objective motivation and need to support establishing the general right to a job as part of the fundamental law, the Constitution. We will only have a movement if the great many become conscious that it is possible to win such a right, and only if the People wake up from their current Rip Van Winkle sleep.

Because of its place in production, the working class must lead any victorious struggle to institute progressive property laws, rights and the dependent other human rights. To lead, the working class must be class conscious and organized for struggle as a result of objective and subjective experience. That consciousness must include awareness of legal goals, the consciousness taking organizational form as elements of a political program. Because constitutional amendment requires 2/3 majority of the Congress or the state legislatures to propose an amendment and 3/4 majority of the states for ratification, it also requires building a mass movement to accomplish. It is a method for involving masses in making fundamental law as opposed to a few lawyers arguing before a few judges in courts. It is an inherently popular tendency in our jurisprudence. Without ignoring the slow pace of the left movement today and the somnolence of the People, we prepare this legal strategy for the day when again pro-working-class majorities reactive and conscious as in the 1930s.

Partial History of struggle for full employment

The famous People's struggles in the era of the Great Depression won a number of economic reforms. Symbolically, the success and highpoint of the historical political surge for full employment (the actualization of the right to a job) in the US can be measured by the fact that in 1944 President Franklin Roosevelt presented to Congress in his State of the Union address an Economic Bill of Rights and said among other things:
We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity an be established for all – regardless of station, race or creed – the right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries of shops or farms or mines of the Nation – but also to education, housing and access to all forms of public facilities and services.

According to writer Bertram Ross in "Rethinking Full Employment" (The Nation, January 17, 1987) "the result "of Roosevelt's thrust "was the introduction in Congress of a full-employment bill. But in 1946 a coalition of conservative lawmakers deleted the "right to useful and remunerative job" from the original proposal. When finally passed in diluted form, the Employment Act of 1946 expressed a commitment not to full employment but to avoiding depression through the growth of a warfare-welfare state."

In 1978 The Humphrey-Hawkins full employment act was passed which called for reducing unemployment to four percent. But these two laws are weaker than the goal that Roosevelt articulated in 1944. The movement for economic justice that had pushed Roosevelt so far has slowed down considerably in the decades since. Today one feels that the political pendulum has swung to the other extreme from the reforms and reformist atmosphere of the New Deal era. Humphrey-Hawkins is not the household name it was at one time; and in fact the full employment slogans and laws have been largely relegated to scofflaw scorn until neo-liberalism and globalism are overcome by a new movement.

Yet even in this period of ebb for the movement, the Labor Party is holding up the banner for economic rights, including a proposal for a Constitutional amendment for a right to a decent job as it's number one programmatic element. In my opinion, this is an important step forward in the labor movement's legal strategy for economic rights. If the movement had been able to use its large majorities from the 1930's to constitutionalize some of the fundamental elements of the New Deal, the rollback of the New Deal today might not have proceeded so far under Reagan and his successors.

Although we should not delude ourselves that a right to a job and decent living can be fully guaranteed under capitalist relations of production, the proposal herein is reformist in form, while radical in content. I offer it as a reform pregnant with revolution.

In sum, you have to have a job to live. The right to a job is a radical reform, a fundamental human right and a common sense necessity concerning which political activists should be able to get people's attention, for it is in the interest of the overwhelming majority.

On the other hand, as we would expect in a society where the bourgeoisie is the ruling class, the Constitution already reflects, protects and reproduces the critical bourgeois interests in capitalist relations of production, the right to private ownership in the basic means of production which implies the right to seek maximum private profits and private accumulation of capital through exploitation of wage laborers. Of course, the Constitution doesn't come right out and say it this way. I would say that capitalist powers are codified in the two Fifth Amendment clauses, the Due Process Clause and the Takings Clause. The Due Process Clause provides that no person (including corporations) shall be deprived of property without due process. The Takings Clause provides that no private property shall be taken for public purpose without just compensation.

Our radical legal goal, stated briefly, must be to establish through amendment a Constitutional provision on a right to a job and also provide that it has priority over the right to ownership and control of private property in the basic means of production. So, for example, the rights of workers to jobs would take priority over the corporate prerogative of private property ownership to close a plant, mine, shop or office.

Why a constitutional amendment?

This proposal for a Constitutional Amendment to protect jobs occurred to me in the context of the fight against plant closings in the mid 1980's. As General Motors announced the shocking closing of its Fleetwood and Cadillac plants in Detroit. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., drafted a bill for a moratorium on plant closings. Besides the fact that such a law had little chance of passing a Congress and President controlled by big business, if such a law did pass, I was sure that it would be challenged by General Motors as an unconstitutional taking of private property pursuant to the 5th Amendment. I undertook what seemed to me my duty as a people's lawyer to prepare a Constitutional Amendment that could be part of an effective program to protect jobs and win full employment.

The Constitution's Fifth Amendment Due Process and "Taking" Clauses make imperative the constitutionalization of the job creation and protection rights that so many workers have fought for and believed were theirs for so long. There seems little question that legislation that challenges the monopolies' prerogatives in use of their capital, a necessary element to guarantee jobs and full employment, would be attacked as unconstitutional based on these Fifth Amendment provisions.

The clauses are consecutive in the Fifth Amendment as follows:
No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

Throughout their legal history these clauses have been used as a shield for bourgeois private property. The clauses are used to prevent use of basic means of production for the general welfare, which today demands planned management and use of factories, mines, and offices in a way that everyone is assured an opportunity to do productive labor.

Remedy of this unjust interpretation of the two clauses is complicated by the fact that the Fifth Amendment clauses make no distinction between private property in general and PERSONAL property in the non-legal, lay sense. Personal property is appropriately protected by the wording of the Fifth Amendment. Personal property should not be taken without due process or just compensation.

The bourgeoisie and the monopoly media and education propaganda system exploit public confusion over the distinction between these two types of property. The capitalists, like wolves in sheeps' clothing, claim that socialists see individual, personal property (and freedom), and corporate/monopoly, private property (and "free" enterprise) as equivalent lambs to be slaughtered in the communist revolution. Yet, on the contrary, socialists seek to abolish only private ownership in the basic means of production not personal property in commodities for individual consumption, and in the process seek to establish the freer and fuller all-around development of the individual.

In fact, historically it is interesting to note that the bourgeoisie seemingly have from the time of the establishment of the Constitution played a game of hide and seek concerning private property rights. If as historian Herbert Aptheker argued there was unanimous agreement among the framers of the Constitution that the purpose of government was to protect private property then it is remarkable that provision for protection of private property does not appear in the Constitution before the Bill of Rights Amendments.

It would seem that protection of private property was thoroughly provided for in the judge made, common law, where it was hidden from mass consciousness, perhaps, and known mainly by the elite mandarin class of lawyers. For the framers of the Constitution, who overwhelmingly represented the propertied classes, to frankly and openly include it in the Constitution would have amounted to an unnecessary provocation of the masses, potentially exposing to the working classes a fundamental secret of the capitalist system of exploitation.

However, perhaps ironically, perhaps purposely, the private property protection was smuggled into the Constitution, Trojan horse style, by glossing over the difference between private and personal property, as described above, and by exploiting the masses' legitimate concern for protection of their personal property from unjust governmental seizure. The Fifth Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, one of the most distinctive imprints of mass popular strength on the Constitution at the time of its creation.

The "bottom line" is that the law has an hierarchical structure. Obviously, the Constitution prevails over Congressional legislation when the two are in conflict. Thus, the right to a job must be elevated to a Constitutional status to avoid being trumped by the Taking Clause and the Due Process Clause. Otherwise the vast resources and great energy expended in winning jobs legislation will be wasted as it is struck down by a single stroke of Mr. Injustice Rehnquist's pen.

The Constitution's provision for Amendment (Article V) was truly revolutionary for the time that it was enacted and even for today. It essentially recognized for the first time in history that fundamental social and political change is inevitable, and that these changes must be represented in fundamental law. The Amendment provision has even been termed revolutionary. As Herbert Aptheker says in The Early Years of the Republic:
The right of revolution is insisted upon in the writings of Madison and Jefferson and was stated at this time with particular clarity by James Wilson, a member of the (Constitutional) Convention, and later an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States: "A revolution principle certainly is, and certainly should be taught as a principle of the United States, and of every State of the Union. This revolution principle that the sovereign power residing in the people, they may change their constitution or government whenever they please, is not a principle of discord, rancor or war. It is a principle of melioration, contentment and peace…." These means to amend the Constitution are to be handled by future generations as the generation of the (American) Revolution and the Constitution handled urgent problems before them. Happily, however, and this is one of the significant results of that Revolution and provisions of that Constitution, legality is to be on the side of those seeking such change, be it as fundamental as it may, so long as it reflects the will of the majority of the people. That is , so long as it does not violate the basic precept of the Republic, namely, popular sovereignty.


This provision, used justly, makes the Constitution truly alive and revolution potentially legal. The Amendment provision is a time-tested, eminently lawful, patriotic American method which must be seriously considered and used as a good form for peaceful transition from reforms through democratic revolution. This is an important consideration when radicals, especially communists, have been falsely stereotyped as advocating violent and illegal overthrow of the government. An effort to make radical change through constitutional amendment is a fundamentally LEGAL radical act.

This provision can be used to make law not a fixed and eternal "truth", but an evolving developing system reflecting social development and collective mass action. Some of the most advanced aspects of US law came through this "revolutionary" process, of course: the Bill of Rights, the 13th, 14th 15th and 19th Amendments, et al. All progressives have an interest in
popularizing a dialectical/historical understanding of law and its specific manifestation in that form in the Amendment provision.

Isn't the right to a job already part of the law?

When I first undertook to investigate the right to a job, I thought it was well-settled in US law that there was none; and even more that it is well settled that monopoly corporations have a right to guarantee that a significant number of people will not have a job or decent income.

However, the former editor of The Guild Practitioner, Attorney Ann Fagan Ginger explained to me that the way to succeed in the fight to get full employment is to argue that full employment is not a new idea, that it is as old as the Constitution itself or at least as the concepts of the New Deal (as discussed above) which people desperately believed were establishing certain economic minimums forever. In other words, there is customary and legal precedent for a fundamental right to earn a living. Readers of The Guild Practitioner know that Ginger is also legendary for founding a new approach to progressive law which is to use international law especially the United Nations Charter, conventions, treaties and covenants in US domestic courts. Author Sam Rosenwein makes this argument based on extensive research into the precedential authority of US jurisprudence and history, as well as international treaties.

The current proposal for Constitutional Amendment must not be considered in contradiction to the approach of Ginger and Rosenwein. Their method gathers ammunition for progressive lawyers who a are fighting continuing battles on behalf of economic victims right now. In those individual cases, nothing should be spared in trying to persuade individual judges that precedent and reason demand protection of a right to a living. Furthermore, as Ginger has often explained, claiming that a right exists in morality and justice, and has existed for a long time in history as an idea is an important method of political education and persuasion of the population. Arguing that racial or gender equality or trade union rights or the right to earn a living are the "true" American tradition and spirit is important in many ways. It assures some that they are not doing something crazy or way out. It counters charges that we are importing a foreign ideology. It connects us with the majority in history as well as the present. It gives confidence that we can win.

There is a limitation to this approach, because in fact, racism/Jim Crow was the law of the land once, as were and are anti-union and anti-job right statutes and common law. Otherwise, why have we been struggling so hard all of these decades?

In considering the whole body and system of US law and the reality of the economic system which the law reflects, there is little question that the vast majority of courts do not recognize the right to earn a living (citation of General Motors Ypsilanti plant closing case) and the courts do recognize a private property right to deny earning a living. These legal principles are cornerstones of the capitalist system. To deny that these principles are part of our system of legal rules would be almost to deny that the US has a capitalist economic system.

But so what! In different circumstances we must emphasize different aspects of, even contradictory aspects of our legal ideology. As I say above, where arguing an individual case or even bolstering mass confidence in the morality and justness of the fight for a right to a job, it is important to emphasize those glimmerings of enlightened thinking that have appeared once in a while among judges and legislators in response to mass struggles. It is sometimes important to argue that the progressive provisions of the Constitution (including the Preamble) and Declaration of Independence logically imply although do not say directly and explicitly that there must be rights to earn a living and decent income (The draft amendment offered below specifically refers and relies on the Constitutional purposes, stated in the Preamble, to establish justice, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty). It is important to argue that the well settled international law in UN statutes is that there is such a right, and that these laws are part of US supreme law as treaties.

Yet in considering what must be done to bring mass popular support for statutory and constitutional change, we must emphasize that the overwhelming majority of US judges interpret the law as denying these rights, notwithstanding that this interpretation is contrary to the spirit of America's best traditions as Ginger and Rosenwein argue. In a word, we must not only reinterpret the law, but change it.

A Draft Amendment

Amendment XXVIII

Section 1. Every adult American able and willing to earn a living through paid work has the right to and shall have a free choice among opportunities for useful, productive and fulfilling paid employment at decent real wages or for self-employment.

Section 2. Every adult American unable to work for pay or find employment pursuant to Section 1 has the right to and shall be provided by the Federal and State governments an adequate standard of living that rises with increases in the wealth and productivity of society.

Section 3. Pursuant to the obligation to establish Justice, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty, the Federal and State governments shall serve as the employers of last resort in insuring fulfillment of Section 1.

Section 4. In a case where Section 1 is in conflict with the Amendment V provision or Amendment XIV provision reading "Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation,” Section 1 of Amendment XVIII shall prevail

Section 5. In a case where Section 1 is in conflict with the Amendment V provision or Amendment XIV provision that no person shall be deprived of property, without due process of law, Section 1 of Amendment XXVIII shall prevail.

Section 6. The common law doctrine of employment-at-will is hereby abolished. All employment discharge shall be with just cause.

Section 7. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Time does not permit an extensive discussion of a number of issues and questions raised by this draft. I will do an abbreviated annotation of the proposed amendment.

The language in Sections 1 and 2 is based on The Income and Jobs Action Act, a bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers of Michigan and Charles Hayes of Illinois in the mid 1980's. Regarding that wording, Bertram Gross said in the second part of his two part article in The Nation on the Hayes-Conyers Bill ("Making an Issue of Full Employment) said:

"...First, it replaces the old "right to a job" with the "right to earn a living", as suggested by Ann Fagan Ginger of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute. Income rights for those unable to work for pay or find a suitable job are defined in terms of "an adequate standard of living that rises with increases in the wealth and productivity of the society." In uniting job rights and income rights, it strengthens each concept."

I have merely proposed constitutionalizing the "Fundamental Rights" section of the Hayes-Conyers bill (The Quality of Life Action Act or The Income and Jobs Action Act).

This draft Constitutional Amendment for a Right to Earn a Living, pursuant to its Section 7 envisions comprehensive implementation by Congressional Acts, such as the bills of Hayes and Conyers (HR 1398 of 1986 and HR 2870 of 1987 the Economic Bill of Rights Act"); or former Congressperson Ronald Dellums' A Living Wage, Jobs For All Act of 1997 (HR 1050); or the Jobs Bill by Rep. Matthew Martinez, D-Calif. The Living Wage Ordinances now sweeping the country could even play a role in fulfilling the broad Constitutional mandate.

This draft might be expanded to a full 2nd Constitutional Bill of Rights, an Economic Bill of Rights, as President Roosevelt anticipated in his State of the Union Messages in 1941 and 1944.

Employment law Attorney Larry Daves suggested the inclusion of the provision abolishing the employment-at-will doctrine.

This is truly a draft and I welcome comments, criticisms and suggestions from readers of this article.

Conclusion

The jobs movement's legal aims must be well chosen. The substance of the movement has been shaped by US social and economic reality – the history of struggle and the development of the relations and forces of production. We are ripe for a right to a job. But the legal form must be as profound as the substance. In the US rights are made legally most binding not only by statute, but by making them part of the Constitution. When the people rise the next time, let the people's lawyers be prepared with our writs.

Sources:

Sam Rosenwein, "The Right to Earn a Living," The Guild Practitioner, Vol. 49 number 1 1987; "A Special Issue on New U.S. Human Rights Laws," The Guild Practitioner, Vol. 51, number 3, summer 1994.

Victor Perlo, Superprofits and Crises, International, 1988.

Herbert Aptheker, Early Years of the Republic, International Publishers, 1989.

James Lawler, "Freedom and the U.S. Constitution: Aspects of the Legal Theory of Mitchell Franklin," The Guild Practitioner, Fall 1987.

Franklin Roosevelt, State of the Union Message of 1944.

Prof. William P. Quigley, "The Right to Work and Earn a Living Wage: A Proposed Constitutional Amendment," Director of Gillis Poverty Law Center, Loyola University School of Law. www.loyno.edu/~quigley/Articles/nyclawrev.pdf

My comments:


Great article.

The right to a job is clearly articulated in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, too.

In addition to, and along with, the right to a job comes the right to a living wage job with full protections under all state and federal labor laws.

Over two-million American workers have jobs in the Indian Gaming Industry. These workers are employed in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages; and, without any rights under state or federal labor laws as all other workers enjoy the protections of.

The minimum wage should be a real living--- non-poverty--- wage as you suggest here. You could incorporate this into your proposed legislation very simply by stating that the minimum wage should be legislatively tied to the actual and real cost of living factors as calculated by the United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics... as the real cost of living increases, so does the minimum wage. Same thing should be done with Social Security, SSI, workers comp., unemployment compensation, welfare.

The American labor movement, since 1948 or so, has refused to fight for demands that benefit the entire working class and this is more the reason why there has been a lack of organizing that any other reason--- most workers in this country take organized labor as a joke not capable of winning anything anymore and have lost all confidence in the AFL-CIO and Change To Win because of this.

One thing we can all do is promote the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the ONE primary question people always have after reading it is the same question Stalin had in opposing it at the time: Who enforces it?

The Soviet Union opposed the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights because there was no enforcement provision and this is what is wrong with capitalist democracy which has been noted from the times of the Jamestown Settlement when wash women and glassblowers went on strike to protect their right to jobs with rights and to have living wages.

We need to tell people when they as who enforces the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights is: YOU do.

And fighting for the kind of legislation you are suggesting is one way for people to fight back... which begs the question: Who is going to initiate activity across the country for such legislation?

Could a "kickoff" for this type of legislation take place on December 10, 2009 in celebration of the Anniversary of the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights by groups of grassroots activists all across the country... perhaps as an activity of CPUSA Districts and Clubs?

We really need a very comprehensive piece of legislation to bring together all working people based upon defending the standard of living of the working class which begins with the right to a job... a job with living wages and full rights and protections unless we want to see the proliferation of jobs like casino workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry are now being subjected to through legislation enacted by the Democrats; this legislation is known as "Compacts" intentionally designed to exclude protecting the rights of workers.

Already, Obama's "green jobs" initiative has enabled Mariah Power (a green industry) to create jobs for workers building wind generating equipment under the same terms of employment as casino workers in McGregor, Minnesota--- poverty wages and no rights under state or federal labor laws. And organized labor has cheered this project on through the "blue-green alliance" and now the United Steelworkers union is pushing an anarchist Mondragon Co-op approach which will mean more poverty wages and lack of rights for workers.

Also, we have seen how American workers are losing jobs as manufacturing overseas using cheaper labor and resources is being encouraged by the Obama Administration and the Democrats with the use of tax-payer subsidies.

No contact information was included as part of this article so one can only surmise the idea has been presented with the thinking that someone other than the writer will act on his ideas so along with this article working people can begin to set up some kind of organizational network promoting this suggestion.

There is some suggestion that working people will need an alternative to either of the two corporate controlled political parties to actually achieve such an initiative.

Alan L. Maki
Co-chair,
Lake-of-the-Woods Communist Club
Members in Minnesota, Manitoba, Ontario

58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763

218-386-2432

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Working class ideas crossing borders...

There have been a number of interesting progressive developments in the North American labor movement in recent months which would seem to fit together except the initiatives are separated by the Canada-U.S. border.

Generally, the Canadian labour movement has been much more advanced than the U.S. labor movement in many ways and it would be helpful if U.S. and Canadian workers would start to share some of their more advanced concepts and ideas for taking on the bosses and Wall Street's and Bay Street's governments.

This is an interesting article from Canadian Dimension Magazine about the "Stewards' Assembly" in Toronto last spring which is followed by an article by Stewart Acuff of the AFL-CIO calling for all workers to become "warriors for justice." Combining these two ideas could prove to be a very powerful new development in organized labour/labor on both sides of the border and if workers were to join hands across the border in joint actions and activities, especially around auto and steel, this could be the beginning of working people struggling for real political power--- and quite possibly economic power--- and the opportunity to be a major part of the decision-making process for a change--- pun intended.

There are issue that would make for good battles with our enemies on Wall Street and Bay Street; battles that could be won: the minimum wage... could U.S. and Canadian workers mount a powerful campaign to win minimum wage legislation for minimum wages that are real living wages based upon the scientifically calculated figures of the two counties' departments of labor; and unemployment compensation based upon a real living wage from time of unemployment until time of re-employment.

This is something definitely worth mulling over and thinking about.

What would it take to organize similar "stewards' assemblies" where training takes place to turn each and every worker into "warriors for justice" as suggested by Stewart Acuff. The possibilities and opportunities are limitless.

What would be the results if Canadian and U.S. union stewards convened a cross border conference to discuss how to build the labor movement into real rank-and-file action where workers become "warriors for justice?" Perhaps convene such a conference in Detroit or Windsor hosted by the Detroit Labor Council and the Windsor and District Labour Council?

Something to think about.

Alan L. Maki



Read on... lots of food for thought in these two articles:


Toronto Labour Council Organizes Stewards’ Assembly
Herman Rosenfeld | August 26th 2009 |

Photos available at the Canadian Dimension web site:

http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2480/

Historic Toronto Labour Council’s Steward Assembly, May 7, 2009. Photo by John Maclennan.

Historic Toronto Labour Council’s Steward Assembly, May 7, 2009. Photo by John Maclennan.


In an environment where working people in Ontario have suffered major setbacks, organized labour’s response has so far been disappointing. Until the current round of public sector strikes, aside from a few workplace occupations demanding severance and demonstrations calling for pension protection and EI changes — there has been little resistance.

The May 7th coming together of over 1,600 stewards, workplace representatives, staff, and other union reps in Toronto around the necessity of fighting against attacks by employers and governments was an unprecedented and impressive exception that brought some hope for forward motion. It was organized by the Toronto Labour Council led by President John Cartwright. The meeting brought together a mix of workplace representatives from public and private sector unions from across all of the different factions within the labour movement. It was the first such meeting in living memory and was the result of an impressive organizing effort.

This was the latest in a series of projects by the Cartwright leadership of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council. Previous efforts included the electoral project to tilt the balance of the Toronto Board of Education in favour of those who wanted to challenge the Conservative Provincial government; a movement to raise the minimum wage — and engage different communities as well as unions in the process; fighting against water privatization; arguing for local sourcing rules for the city government; the more recent Good Jobs Coalition project and the ongoing support of labour struggles.

The meeting aimed, as Cartwright noted, to “reach deeply down into the labour movement and engage the true-front-line activists that are our stewards.” It’s important to note that rank and file leaders aren’t necessarily politically engaged. Efforts to involve them in larger struggles are extremely difficult but absolutely essential to building a response to the crisis. As an introduction to the crisis and the necessity of fighting back, this meeting was very important.

While most of those who attended the meeting felt extremely good about the experience (including me), the jury is still out on whether or not the assembly will actually contribute to developing the mobilizational capacity of the union movement, stimulating a larger movement to resist attacks by business and governments, building support for the current round of public sector struggles and challenging the ideological assault being waged against the rights of unions and working people.

The Meeting
The actual assembly covered a number of areas: a presentation on the origins and causes of the crisis; a series of testimonials from the floor by participants from different key union struggles in Toronto over the past few years and from individuals victimized by outsourcing, workplace closures, racism, and concession demands; speeches by CLC President Ken Georgetti, John Cartwright, Winnie Ng (a leader in the Good Jobs Coalition) among others; a short period set aside for small group discussions; speeches by leaders of major union affiliates pledging their collective resistance to the crisis measure of governments and employers; and a “surprise” visit by Toronto Mayor David Miller.

The assembly came away with a commitment to build support for EI reforms and pensions associated with the Canadian Labour Congress campaigns. It ended with a request that the stewards go back to their workplaces, circulate, and discuss the EI petition and mobilize for upcoming political actions demanding reforms.

What Did it Accomplish — and What Will it Contribute?
Walking out of the session, I couldn’t help but feel good about the potential there and hoped that it would be the beginning of an ongoing movement. But events that have unfolded in the three months since the assembly — raise a number of further issues and questions.

There were important limitations of the meeting:

Rather than being an actual assembly, with open discussion, debate, and space for the stewards to initiate points and ideas, it felt more like a process of conveying information. In order to encourage the creation of an ongoing Stewards’ Movement, a living, more participatory process is necessary.

The close ties to Mayor Miller, and the constant references to NDP politicians, showed that the politics of the assembly was confined within the “legitimate” institutional parameters of the labour movement. While some NDP politicians did play a positive role in the Minimum Wage Campaign, the party as a whole has notably failed to lead on even such basic campaigns as EI reform and has been absent from any discussions on alternatives during the crisis. Miller’s address to the assembly reflected the wide “popular front” like platform that has dominated labour politics in Toronto in the current period. This alliance has meant a modest political program that rests on lower business taxes and co-operation between labour and private investors. There was little mention of any vision of a different way of creating jobs and shaping investment, or the need for a political movement that might articulate such a vision.

Even the critique of the financial sector was limited to complaints about speculation and excess profits — rather than a real explanation about the way finance affects jobs, investment, and communities. We need to avoid one-dimensional populism that poses the problem as being “monopolies or financial speculators against the people,” pulling the movement into an alliance with industrial capitalists. The problem of that type of approach is all too evident in the auto sector. There was no mention of demands to control and shape investment through reforms such as nationalizing the banks.

Even more, the assembly begs another set of questions, based upon its success:

If the Toronto Labour Council was able to organize a Stewards’ Assembly, is this happening in other cities across Canada? If not, why isn’t it?

The CLC campaigns remains tied to uninspired and relatively ineffective forms of action. Since the assembly in May, there has been one demonstration in Toronto demanding action on EI reform and pension protection. The turnout was disappointing and wasn’t followed up (or preceded) by more militant actions, such as occupations of EI offices. Where will this campaign go?

Will there be any follow-up with this first effort to bring stewards together from across the city or was this a one-off activity? If there are plans to do it again and build on this initial assembly, what forms might that take?

Will there be efforts to build networks of resistance and solidarity between groups of stewards across the city? Are there plans to produce materials to help stewards explain the crisis to their co-workers and argue for new forms of collective resistance, led by stewards within workplaces?

Are there plans to discuss ways of uniting workplace representative with workers in communities and those not unionized who are also looking for ways to extend and deepen their struggles?

The Toronto Labour Council has taken the lead in a number of areas over the past few years. Once again, in the current context, the Stewards’ Assembly can represent an important counterweight to the defensiveness of Ontario’s labour movement. But the Council operates within the constraints of the official union structures, limited to a certain extent by the conservatism of the leadership of the affiliates and the political and economic structures of the city — even as it works to stretch the boundaries of those limitations.

In this instance, the Stewards’ Assembly needs to become a springboard towards a larger and broader effort to educate and mobilize workers across Toronto in resisting current attacks and developing political approaches independent of business-dominated projects that currently dominate the agenda.





America Needs Warriors for Justice

By:

Stewart Acuff

It is beyond doubt that we are living in a period of potentially great historical change in the United States.

Just a year ago we trade unionists, progressives, and Americans of good will made history with the election of an African-American President--something many of us never thought possible -- and large majorities of pro-working family Democrats in both Houses of Congress.

With the implosion of our financial services sector and the consequent economic crisis and recession, it has become abundantly clear that unregulated, unfettered free market capitalism doesn't work for anyone. We now have irrefutable proof that greed is not good, that the markets don't by themselves work for the common good in the nation's interest, that if all the money and resources go to the top, the middle and the bottom are starved. And speaking of the middle, we now know that the middle class is in peril -- endangered by the policies of free market economics -- unfettered corporate-driven globalization, illegal and immoral union busting, contracting out, working rat, privatization, benefit busting, wage thievery -- all the policies that have made up the 30 year assault on working families and unions. While some may have doubted these truths two or four or more years ago, these truths are beyond doubt today.

Those who once held themselves up to be leaders of our society and government are now scorned -- Wall St, Bush, Cheney, AIG. The recipients of the governments bailouts continue to shovel obscene amounts of our money to executives without a clue while we suffer 10 percent unemployment, continued loss of health care, and declining wages and a consequent declining standard of living, and a potentially frightening future for our kids and grandkids and beyond.

Most importantly, our people are ready for and even demanding change. By significant majorities, Americans want a public healthcare plan included in the larger health care reform package, and Americans want the Employee Free Choice Act to be passed to once again allow American workers to freely form unions and bargain collectively.

America is ready for change.

Why then is change so hard to achieve?

Those who've prosecuted and benefited from the 30 year financial assault on America's working families refuse to let go, to give up what they've come to see as theirs -- the insurance companies, the union busters, the ABC, the Comcasts, the Walmarts, Wall St and manipulators of our finances, the Radical Rightwing including Cheney and Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove and Dick Armey and the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute.

It is clear that if we are to win the change we voted for last fall and many of us have worked for for years, we are gonna have to fight, fight hard, and fight outside the normal Washington lobbying box.

Washington politics and lobbying does not work for workers and working families.

We cannot forget that we've gotten to the verge of passing the Employee Free Choice Act by running the largest national grassroots legislative campaign in the history of the American labor movement. Over the six year course of this campaign we've put literally hundreds of thousands of people on the street and more than a million workers in motion. We delivered one and a half million signatures to the Congress, sent half a million emails, wrote 300,000 handwritten letters and made 200,000 phone calls to Senators.

That's a ton of good work. But it is more than clear that we have to do more of it.

While the Employee Free Choice Act has not yet passed, we have realized many benefits -- more than a dozen states have passed new public employee collective bargaining laws including majority authorization. Public officials from town and county commissions to city councils to state assemblies to governors and mayors to the Congress to the President of the United States now realize what hell workers go through when they try to organize and bargain for a better life. More public officials than ever have weighed in to support workers trying to organize.

We have got to ramp up our grassroots lobbying by our members.

But just as importantly, we have to ramp up our effort to engage and organize workers who don't have a union, to make use of the progress and allies we've made and enlist unorganized workers in the struggle to organize their workplaces and to fight and struggle in the public policy fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Every organizing campaign is a direct and clear reason to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

It is not enough to wait for the Employee Free Choice Act to pass. We have to demonstrate its necessity with struggle--old fashioned struggle right now, today not tomorrow. And by their actions, unorganized workers have to demonstrate the necessity for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

It is not enough to wait on the law to change.

History is not made and humanity is not advanced by those who accept the status quo. History is made and the human condition is advanced by warriors willing to struggle for a better life for their kids and grandkids, warriors who understand what they have was won by the blood and tears and sacrifice of our forebears.

America today needs warriors -- warriors to organize and struggle, to fight for change, to fight the Radical Right and corporate domination, to organize and struggle, to dare the rat bastards to stop us, to refuse to lose, to challenge the status quo, to tell those who've run our country and too many lives into the ditch that change is now, that we will fight in Washington but that we will also fight all across America.

The future is ours. Let's take it.

Baristas and Supporters from around the Midwest Converge on EGR Starbucks

-----Original Message-----
From: cole dorsey [mailto:grandrapidsstarbucksunion@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 1:47 AM
To: gvsustudentsforfairtrade@lists.riseup.net; michigan sds listserve
Subject: Baristas and Supporters from around the Midwest Converge on EGR Starbucks

For Immediate Release:

IWW Starbucks Workers Union

July 21, 2009

Baristas and Supporters from around the Midwest Converge on East Grand Rapids Starbucks in a show of Solidarity

Who: Current and former Starbucks baristas, and workers from around the Midwest.

Why: EGR Starbucks is the site of the unlawful termination of IWW member Cole Dorsey in 2008. Also, we will show our support for the recent public announcement of Quebec baristas membership in the IWW Starbucks Workers Union.

What: Informational Protest

When: Saturday, July 25th starting at 4:30 pm

Where: Starbucks
2172 Wealthy St. SE
East Grand Rapids, Michigan





###

For more information check out these links:

http://www.grsbuxunion.blogspot.com

http://www.starbucksunion.org

--- On Tue, 7/21/09, Alan Maki wrote:

From: Alan Maki
Subject: RE: Baristas and Supporters from around the Midwest Converge on EGR Starbucks
To: "'cole dorsey'"
Cc: debssoc@sbcglobal.net, beckj@msu.edu, jwojcik@pww.org, jrummel@pww.org, WCS-A@yahoogroups.com, "'David Shove'"
Date: Tuesday, July 21, 2009, 11:26 AM
Brother Dorsey and baristas;

I am sorry I can’t be in East Grand Rapids, Michigan to participate in your informational picket line on Saturday, July 24 because I have other commitments precluding my participation; however, what I have done, is forwarded this on to my Michigan e-mail list of about 4,500 people and I encourage them to continue distributing this communication and call to action.

I encourage anyone who can to participate in your Informational Protest to do so (details below).

I wish to affirm our commitment to your just struggle in quest of justice.

We encourage our members and everyone else to boycott Starbucks until management recognizes the IWW Starbucks Workers Union as the representative of Starbucks workers and a collectively bargained agreement has been reached and a contract signed.

Yours in struggle and solidarity,

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/

Cc: Maggie Bird
President,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

-----Original Message-----
From: cole dorsey [mailto:grandrapidsstarbucksunion@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 6:32 PM
To: Alan Maki
Subject: RE: Baristas and Supporters from around the Midwest Converge on EGR Starbucks

Alan,
Thanks a lot for your support and solidarity. Through solidarity we will win. Good luck on your struggle.

For a Better Future,
Cole Dorsey

Did UAW really win big with Chrysler?

From: MSNBC.com


Did UAW really win big with Chrysler?

Success of deal depends upon company making money again

The Associated Press

updated 3:47 p.m. CT, Sat., May 2, 2009

DETROIT - The United Auto Workers union would appear to be the big winner in the Chrysler bankruptcy saga, having exercised its considerable political muscle to win a 55 percent stake in the country's third-largest automaker.

But when you consider the 55 percent is in a company that lost $16.8 billion last year and has seen its sales drop by half, the victory seems less impressive. Especially since the union's stock must necessarily be converted at some point to cash to pay billions of dollars in retiree health care bills over the next 25 years.

Plus, the union's control in the boardroom will be limited. Despite the large stake, it gets only one seat on a nine-member board that will govern a new Chrysler-Fiat joint venture.

Yes, the union could still come out the winner at Chrysler and at General Motors Corp., which has offered the UAW a 39 percent stake as part of its own reorganization plan. But that depends on the iffy prospect of the companies making money again and their stock values sharply rising.

"I think it's a whole lot weaker than it appears," said Gerald Meyers, a University of Michigan business professor and former CEO of American Motors Corp. "I would say the UAW wouldn't want to get into the speculative game of the stock market. That's not reassuring to retirees."

Unions have in the past traded an ownership stake in a struggling company for wage cuts or other money-saving steps. For the most part the deals, such as an employee stock ownership plan at UAL Corp., parent of United Airlines, have worked well at first, only to fall apart when economic times grew tough, with labor and management fighting as profits declined.

Massive health care bills

The UAW started making concessions during 2007 contract negotiations and that helped in negotiating the stakes they stand to gain now. At the time, both GM and Chrysler had huge labor cost disadvantages compared with Japanese automakers, mainly because they have far more retirees and had agreed to pay their health care bills.

For GM, the health care tab is projected to total $46.7 billion over the lives of about 350,000 retirees and spouses. At Chrysler, it's $10.9 billion for around 82,000 retirees.

So to unload the costs, the companies persuaded a reluctant UAW to take billions in cash to set up trust funds called voluntary employees beneficiary associations, or VEBAs, to pay the bills starting next year.


But the U.S. auto market went bad and both automakers ran out of cash. Enter government financing and the Obama administration, which engineered the Chrysler-UAW deal. Chrysler has now formed an alliance with Fiat, and the government will finance what it hopes will be a quick Chrysler bankruptcy. Chrysler plans to close five more factories and shed thousands more workers as it slims down and resets to build Fiat-designed fuel-efficient cars in North America.

The UAW spent nearly $5 million in independent expenditures to promote Obama's campaign, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, and some Chrysler debtholders contend that the union was unfairly rewarded for that support. Secured creditors were offered roughly 30 cents on the dollar for $6.9 billion in debt. A few balked and the deal fell apart late Wednesday, triggering Thursday's bankruptcy filing.

The UAW's reward, though, could turn out to be punishment if the stock price doesn't rise.


"What's happening at Chrysler and GM is not employee ownership in any recognizable way," said Corey Rosen, founder and executive director of the nonprofit National Center for Employee Ownership. "The employees don't own any part of Chrysler or GM, it's the health trust, and they're going to sell that stock as soon as they can. It's more like somebody saying 'I can't pay the money I owe you, so take some stock and you can sell it.'"

That's exactly what the union intends to do, its president Ron Gettelfinger said Friday in an interview with National Public Radio.

"The VEBA's going to be stressed in order to pay the benefits. So what we will need to do ... is as soon as we possibly can, to start selling these shares," he said.

Fiat is a likely buyer for at least part of the UAW shares, should they gain value. Under its deal with Chrysler, the Italian automaker takes an initial 20 percent stake in exchange for small-car technology. That can rise to 35 percent as goals are met, and Fiat has options to bring its stake up to 51 percent.

Even with the stock, the union won't have much say in the Chrysler boardroom. The trust gets just the one board seat, and it has to vote its shares "in accordance with the direction of the independent directors on the Chrysler board," according to a summary of the UAW's contract concessions.

No boardroom power plays

Owning 55 percent of a company doesn't mean you're managing or even significantly influencing it. Three big employee groups at Chicago-based UAL Corp. agreed to wage cuts and work rule changes in 1994 in exchange for 55 percent of UAL's stock and board seats.

It worked for a year or so. Management introduced task force teams and invited employees into strategy sessions aimed at lowering costs. But the sense of partnership soon unraveled as the employees learned that stock ownership didn't translate to real power or even an ability to sway the board. The employee stock ownership program was eventually eliminated during UAL's Chapter 11 restructuring, in 2003.

Employees of Tribune Co. also got majority ownership as part of the 2007 deal that made multibillionaire investor Sam Zell chairman and CEO. But they also shouldered a good deal of the risk — without control, or even board representation. The future of Tribune's ESOP is highly tenuous with the Chicago company now in bankruptcy court.

The UAW for years had a seat on the boards of Chrysler and DaimlerChrysler AG — Chrysler's previous owner — but had little to show for it, said Harry Katz, dean of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. "That never connected down to the shop floor," he said.


Unlike European unions, the UAW has shied away from boardroom power plays, instead exercising its will at the bargaining table, he said.

Katz said the UAW, through the stock it will get, has gained power relative to management, but it doesn't mean as much when there are no profits to divvy up.

The union was able to preserve base wages and rich health benefits, which is remarkable even though it had to make other concessions, Katz said. He noted that workers represented by the UAW fared far better than nonunion employees at other companies that have entered bankruptcy protection, such as defunct Houston-based energy company Enron Corp.


URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30537512//

Letter to Dr. Nathaniel Cobb, Indian Health Services

Dr. Nathaniel Cobb, MD
Division of Epidemiology
Indian Health Service
5300 Homestead Rd NE
Albuquerque NM 87110
Phone: (505)248-4132
E-mail: nathaniel.cobb@ihs.gov





Dr. Nathaniel Cobb,

Thank you for the quick response.

As I am sure you must have been thinking as you wrote this response to me, I would not find it satisfactory.

I have contacted all the heads of Indian Health at each of the tribes that operate casinos over the last three years on this issue--- NOT ONE SINGLE ONE has responded by e-mail or been willing to talk to me on the phone.

Quite frankly, I seriously doubt there are circumstances where the impact of second-hand smoke can be dealt with in one fell swoop.

Yet, we both know this is more about casino PROFITS and the way casino PROFITS influence POLITICS.

What are you suggesting, is that it will take some kind of revolution in this country before an agency like yours which has a mandate to educate on this serious issue will act?

I find this coming from a medical doctor such as you very strange; that on this one single issue involving human health where so many lives can be saved and health maintained you suggest that it is up to a union to take the action rather than you.

What you are suggesting is that tribal leaderships motivated solely by profits are to be given into on a health care issue so adversely affecting human health as the issue of workers being forced to work in an environment composed of second-hand smoke because you do not want to rock the boat--- using as your excuse: "sovereignty."

There seems to be a clear admission here on your part that these tribal governments involved in gaming have been so corrupted by money they don't even care about the health of their own people let alone anyone else.

As you are fully aware, most of these casinos are run by outside management firms only using sovereignty to escape protecting the rights of casino workers to be free from second-hand smoke in their employment.

You come up with this flimsy excuse that the issue of smoke-free casinos cannot be addressed because the details of the conference--- the Indian Health Summit--- are already set and established.

However, what is preventing those who will be doing the presentations on the serious consequences of tobacco from raising the issue concerning the need for these casinos to go smoke-free because it is a matter of fundamental human rights for workers not to be forced to work in these conditions that we all know are seriously detrimental to human health?

You, as a medical doctor, are requesting that I should send you further information regarding the consequences of working in these smoke-filled casinos?

It is almost unbelievable that you, being a medical doctor, have even written these words.

That you acknowledge you have known about this problem and not insisted the politicians correct this, is a disgrace. You are the expert witness here.

I find it very difficult to understand how the scientific and medical community has managed to turn out the most respected from these professions to testify:

- Against the tobacco companies in law suits;

- At Congressional and State Legislative hearings for "freedom to breath" legislation;

- In support of smoke-free workplaces for everyone else except casino workers.

But, for some reason there is complete, total, overwhelming and absolute silence when it comes to the issue coercing these casinos in the Indian Gaming Industry to go smoke-free to protect the health of two-million casino workers.

At this point, since you agree this is a very serious problem; I would request that you convey my concerns--- AND WHAT YOU CLAIM ARE YOUR SHARED CONCERNS--- to each and everyone of those people who will be participating in the tobacco workshops, forums or making any presentations on tobacco and request that they specifically address the problem of second-hand smoke in casinos and make suggestions and recommendations how this issue will be resolved by coercing these casino managements to go smoke-free.

The Manitoba, Canada government has taken the stand that they will not approve any further casino Compacts or upgrades or new licenses for any casino unless it will be smoke-free.

Something is very wrong with the scenario you bring forward here. I find it kind of strange that a public official such as yourself, who has a legislated mandate to provide the leadership in protecting human health, would tell a citizen writing to you to go and do your job for you.

I expect you to communicate your concerns regarding second-hand smoke (environmental tobacco smoke) to each member of the United States Congress, every single state legislator in each and every state; and, I expect that you will convey your concerns as a medical doctor and in your capacity as a public official with the specific mandate to raise this concern with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Secretary of the Department of Interior; and further, that you instruct all of those employed at the local and state levels working for Indian Health Services to immediately undertake discussions about this with their tribal governments.

Sovereignty has nothing to do with this issue.

Your department and agency is involved in this conference. As a result, you have a mandate to bring this issue forward.

I assume you do not request permission from tribal governments to raise any other issues related to human health; so why would you have conceded your mandate on this vital issue to tribal governments with no demonstrated concern on this issue?

To suggest that this issue can wait until another conference, where both you and I know that I will never receive permission to speak on this issue, is about as insensitive and uncaring a response that anyone could ever expect to receive from a public official who has the scientific and medical background to know and understand that thousands of casino workers will lose their health while others will die from second-hand smoke they are forced to breath as terms and conditions of employment.

I am requesting that you carry out the mandate you have from Congress and act to make sure this issue is addressed at your upcoming conference with the aim of resolving this issue once and for all.

I expect to receive written confirmation that you have taken such action.

I assume that President Barack Obama would not appreciate you dragging your feet on this issue since he is so concerned about health care costs; I don't think I have to lecture you, a medical doctor, about the costs involved in trying to cure cancers, heart and lung problems associated with second-hand smoke in the workplace.

With all the attention now focused on accusations of frivolous government spending, I would think you would be more sensitive to the need to bring this issue forward at your upcoming conference.

Respectfully,

Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

Cc: Maggie Bird
President,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council


-----Original Message-----
From: Nathaniel Cobb [mailto:nathaniel.cobb@ihs.gov]
Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2009 2:18 PM
To: amaki000@centurytel.net
Cc: Jones, Candace (IHS/NPA); Karol, Susan (IHS/HQE); Wohr, Megan S (IHS/PHX)

Subject: Casino workers and smoking

Dear Mr. Maki:

Your email (below) was forwarded to me for response, as the Agency lead for tobacco control. Thank you for your suggestions - I completely agree that environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in Casinos is a serious health issue for both the employees and the patrons. Labor law is outside my expertise and purview, but I will try to address a few of the many questions you raise:

1. Can we have a session on casino workers and ETS exposure at the Indian Health Summit?
- reasonable suggestion, but the practical answer is that we did invite the public to submit abstracts, that deadline has passed, and we have already finalized the agenda and cannot add another session. We do have a tobacco session scheduled, but nothing was submitted that focused specifically on casinos.

2. Have we discussed this issue with ACS, AHA, or ALA?
- yes. In discussions with ACS, we have agreed that local advocacy may be the most effective way to approach this issue.

3. Can IHS work with BIA to ban smoking in Casinos?
- IHS is an agency of Health and Human Services, not Interior. We have no regulatory role with regard to Gaming compacts, so no direct influence. In our advisory role with regard to health issues, we may make recommendations to another agency. Your suggestion has merit, and I will discuss it with senior leadership within IHS. I note that you have cc'd your email to your congressional delegation. The Congress has much more power to dictate terms of Indian Compacts than we do, so you should continue to work closely with them. A formal letter to a Member of Congress or to an Agency Head, with a clearly worded request, will always get a response.

4. What else can we do?
- It is true that ETS exposure is a health issue, but the solutions are political. We have great respect for Tribal Sovereignty, and unless and until Tribal Leaders support a smoking ban in casinos, it is not likely to happen. So my suggestion is that you contact the National Indian Health Board and ask for a time slot to present the issue at their next Consumer Conference. That meeting is a great opportunity to influence the thinking of Indian Country leadership.

Thank you for your concern, and I look forward to attending your session at the NIHB conference! If you have any educational materials or scientific studies of ETS and casino workers, I would appreciate your sending me copies.

--
Nathaniel Cobb MD
Chief, Chronic Disease Branch
Division of Epidemiology
Indian Health Service
5300 Homestead Rd NE
Albuquerque NM 87110
(505)248-4132


From: Alan Maki [mailto:amaki000@centurytel.net]
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2009 9:47 PM
To: Kimi De Leon; Joan Kim
Cc: 'Jim Hart'; 'John Kolstad'; 'Kip Sullivan'; 'Carl Levin'; 'Sen.Jim Carlson'; rep.bill.hilty@house.mn; rep.tom.anzelc@house.mn; rep.tom.Rukavina@house.mn; rep.tony.sertich@house.mn; ddepass@startribune.com; mmiron@bemidjipioneer.com; bswenson@bemidjipioneer.com; 'Chris Spotted Eagle'; jgoldstein@americanrightsatwork.org; teresa_detrempe@klobuchar.senate.gov;
peter.erlinder@wmitchell.edu; peter.makowski@mail.house.gov; esquincle@verizon.net; 'Walter Tillow'; nursenpo@gmail.com; 'Steve Early'; 'Joshua Frank'; 'Ta, Minh'; 'Rhoda Gilman'; 'David Shove'; 'ken nash'; 'Ken Pentel'; WCS-A@yahoogroups.com; MARKOWIT@history.rutgers.edu; tdennis@gfherald.com; 'Myers, John'; loneagle@paulbunyan.net; 'Thomas Kurhajetz'; mhoney@u.washington.edu; moderator@portside.org; debssoc@sbcglobal.net; 'Tom Meersman'; peterb3121@hotmail.com; laurel1@dailyjournal-ifalls.com; jscannel@aflcio.org; rgettel@uaw.net; gdubovich@usw.org; info@jamesmayer.org; mzweig@notes.cc.sunysb.edu; rachleff@macalester.edu; advocate@stpaulunions.org; elizabeth_reed@levin.senate.gov; 'Alan Uhl'; 'Charles Underwood'
Subject: Re: Question on Indian Health Summit

To whom it may concern;

Could you tell me if there will be a discussion at the Indian Health
Summit--- July 7-9, 2009 in Denver, Colorado--- concerning the issue of casino workers in the Indian Gaming Industry and the impact to their health of second hand smoke in their workplaces?

Could you advise me if there have been any discussions about this with the American Cancer Society and/or the Heart and Lung Foundation?

I am very concerned since I find nothing on this important topic among any of the materials you are distributing for the Indian Health Summit.

With health care costs become an important topic for discussion it would seem that this issue would at least merit some kind of mention at an Indian Health Summit considering the large number of Native Americans employed in the Indian Gaming Industry.

Perhaps you would be interested in having me address one of the plenary sessions since this topic has not been considered previously.

I would point out that I have contacted my of the local offices and administrators of the Indian Health Services concerning this issue and no one will speak to me.

With the Indian Health Services being part of the Department of Interior and associated with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, it would only seem logical that no further casino "Compacts" would be approved unless they contain provisions banning and prohibiting smoking.

I would also suggest that the Indian Health Services insist that all existing "Compacts" be re-opened so a ban and prohibition on smoking can be inserted into them.

Compacts" are nothing more than contracts and the Obama Administration has seen fit to insist that previously negotiated contracts with labor unions be re-negotiated so there is definitely a precedent that has been established for doing this and I am sure you will agree with me that there could not be a better argument made for renegotiating these "Compacts" than to protect the health of hundreds of thousands of workers employed in these casinos who, in addition to working in these smoke-filled working environments are not protected under any state or federal labor laws, which makes this problem of being employed in a work environment detrimental to human health even a more serious concern.

Perhaps the Indian Health Services could make a recommendation to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Secretary of the Department of Interior that the Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, becomes involved so that the protection of casino workers' rights under all state and federal labor laws protecting all other workers in the United States be included at the time the Compacts are re-opened to protect the health of casino workers.

If you have any doubts second-hand smoke contributes to an unhealthy work environment and that second-hand smoke is recognized as a leading contributor to a variety of cancers and heart and lung diseases please do not hesitate to request additional information. I will be more than happy to attend your Indian Health Care Summit with the necessary resource materials.

With some two-million workers now employed in the Indian Gaming Industry we want to make sure everything possible is being done to protect the health and well-being of these workers.

If I have addressed this letter to the wrong persons, would you please provide me with the name of the proper person/s and department/s this letter should be sent to.

If you think this issue concerning the impact of second-hand smoke on the health of casino workers is not significant enough to be discussed at the Indian Health Summit would you be so kind as to advise me of your decision and how it was reached?

Thanking you in advance for your timely consideration;

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/

Cc: Maggie Bird
President,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council



Dr. Cobb delivered this report way back in 2002:


Nathaniel Cobb, M.D.

Determinants of Cancer Mortality and Cancer Survival among American Indians and Alaska Natives

Friday, March 15

American Indian and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) represent one of the most vulnerable populations in the United States, with heavier burdens of many disease categories (diabetes, injury, alcohol related deaths, tuberculosis, suicide, etc.) and more unfavorable measures of health and economic status (infant mortality rate, life expectancy, poverty rate) than all other ethnic groups in the US. Once considered very rare among AI/AN, cancer is now their second leading cause of death. There is a remarkable variation of cancer rates among tribes, which may be caused by genetic, environmental, or behavioral differences. Although overall rates of cancer among AI/AN are still lower than the US all-races rates, 5-year survival from cancer is much worse than other groups. In this presentation I will describe geographic patterns of cancer mortality among AI/AN and advance hypotheses to explain the variability. I will also present results of research that attempts to explain the disparity in cancer survival rates through analysis of various characteristics of the patient (age, distance from hospital, frequency of visits, other conditions) and the health care system (missed opportunities, referral patterns, screening).

Dr. Cobb received his undergraduate degree from Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He trained in Family Practice at the University of New Mexico, and after practicing with Indian Health Service for several years, he completed the two year Epidemic Intelligence Service fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Dr. Cobb also completed the academic portion of the Cancer Prevention and Control fellowship at the National Cancer Institute.

Dr. Cobb is currently Director of the Chronic Disease Epidemiology Section of the Indian Health Service National Epidemiology Program, Chief Medical Officer for IHS National Programs, and Director of the IHS Cancer Prevention and Control Program. In addition to his IHS duties, he teaches at the University of New Mexico MPH program and maintains a part-time clinical practice in Emergency Medicine. He also races bicycles and tries to stay ahead of two teenage sons.

References:


Patterns of Cancer Mortality among Native Americans. Cancer 1998;83:2377-83. MEDLINE




I notice Dr. Nathaniel Cobb made a nice little contribution to Barack Obama's campaign. It seems that among the bureaucrats in the Indian Health Services there is quite the little pool of campaign contributions... I find it interesting that there have been no surveys done by the Indian Health Services asking patients if they are employed in environments of second-hand smoke; but, patients are asked if they smoke:


Person
Candidate
Address


Rick Kruis
Donation of $4,664 to Presidential elections 2008
Democrat
Rick Kruis
Physician
Indian Health Service
Updated
Q2/2008
Barack Obama
$4,664
910 SUSAN AVE
Gallup NM

Nathaniel Cobb
Donation of $1,274 to Presidential elections 2008
Democrat
Nathaniel Cobb
Physician
Indian Health Service
Updated
Q3/2008
Barack Obama
$1,274
PO BOX 2939
Corrales NM

Ronald Belinski
Donation of $1,163 to Presidential elections 2008
Republican
Ronald Belinski
Physician
Indian Health Service
Updated
Q1/2008
Ron Paul
$1,163
13910 E 89TH ST N
Owasso OK

Card Check Is Dead

Interesting. Now that that the Employee Free Choice Act is stymied by the Democrats after taking tens of millions of dollars of workers' money in campaign contributions and John Sweeney remained shamefully silent as the Israeli killing machine slaughtered Palestinians because he thought if he were to criticize the carnage that would destroy any chance of getting Democratic Party support for the Employee Free Choice Act.

The leadership of organized labor from the local levels right on up to the very top offices of the AFL-CIO and Change To Win have obediently and loyally served the Democratic Party, which is nothing but a Wall Street party of war and corruption; but, unlike the corrupt big-business and big-money people who thoroughly dominate the Democratic Party, working people have nothing to show for their years of support.

We have heard about "high-road" capitalists and "low-road" capitalists from outfits like "Progressives for Obama," the Nation Magazine, and even the Lovestone grouping which has, again, come to dominate the leadership of the Communist Party USA with a class collaborationist betrayal of the working class under the guise of being part of the "historic" coalition that elected Barack Obama. From the AFL-CIO's "think-tank," the Campaign for America's Future, we have heard all about how they have spear-headed all these "grassroots" efforts for reforms their heroes in the Democratic Party are going to implement... instead, these dirty birds like Robert Borosage and his sidekick Roger Hickey, acting upon instructions from John Sweeney, have sown divisions in the movement for health care reform dealing single-payer universal health care the exact same fate as Card Check.

As for the contention of the Wall Street Journal that the right is pouting over its defeat, here again, we have the Wall Street Journal peddling this crap in order to deceive and disorient.

The right has nothing to pout about, Wall Street's candidates won the election. Barack Obama is no socialist; Obama is no progressive; President Barack Obama isn't even a liberal... from day one Barack Obama has been Wall Street's president.

Now organized labor's leaders will sit and pout until John Sweeney's retirement takes place.

And we can be sure some other big-mouth looking for a nice big fat paycheck compliments of workers' dues will step forward talking real tough while doing nothing.

John Sweeney and Andy Stern set this defeat up for Card Check when they divided the labor movement--- first by backing down on single-payer universal health care, then in their silence as Israel slaughtered Palestinian children in Gaza.

These labor fakers have no intent of turning organized labor loose in fighting capital; they understand their roles very well. They play a role as important in this capitalist system every bit as important as the Wall Street bankers and the industrialists. The role of these labor leaders is to create a docile working class. No matter how tough the talk we hear from the big blowhards like Leo Gerard of the USW... we can rely on them for one thing in the end when all is said and done: These labor fakers will never show up for a fight.

Most likely working people are going to end up with labor legislation reform in the name of the Employee Free Choice Act which will further restrict the rights of working people to organize into unions and John Sweeney and his slobbering Obama supporters and boosters will try to put on a happy face claiming it was the best compromise they could get.

This is the longest running circus in the world.

The sad fact is, the Wall Street Journal has run an op/ed piece more truthful than any opinion pieces in the People's Weekly World for the last nine years.

And, now, for the next act under the Big Top: Ladies and Gentleman, introducing the newest act to the show, straight from Barack Obama's transition team, please give a warm round of applause to David Bonior who the Wall Street Democrats have selected as their choice to mislead organized labor as he enters the center ring.

We have the "Tea Party" protesters with their three cornered newspaper hats and we have the three-ring circus where the Democrats in one ring, the Republicans in the other ring take turns showcasing their best new acts in the center ring.

The only question remaining is: How much longer are people going to continue purchasing tickets to the show--- perhaps when their credit cards fed into the ATM machine come back with the message: transaction not allowed.

Alan L. Maki

Some Democrats only care about labor's money.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124035645604940949.html

It has been three hard months of political exile for those on the right, a time for them to count their grievances and dress their outrage in the trappings of centuries past. Some have donned colonial outfits to stage tea parties. Others have found the 1860s more to their taste, reviving the fiery language of secession fever.

But they can all take heart from one development in the nation's capital. Good old K Street, where the big tea party never stopped, has all but halted organized labor's effort to make it easier for workers to unionize.

After massive lobbying both by labor and by business, it appears that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which, as it now stands, would allow workers to organize in many cases merely by signing cards instead of holding elections, will not have the 60 votes required to get past a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

Now, to be pro-labor is to resign yourself to years of failures and defeats, with few tea parties along the way for consolation. Even so, the setback on EFCA has to be a bitter one. Union members worked hard to elect Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress, as they did to put Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton in the White House. And now, just as in those previous two periods of Democratic governance, labor's friends are having trouble enacting basic labor-law reforms.

To understand why we need new rules governing unionization, look no further than yesterday's New York Times, where Steven Greenhouse told the story of a Louisville, Ky., hospital whose nurses tried to form a union but failed after they were reportedly threatened with losing their benefits among other things.

Such practices are commonplace and well-documented by Human Rights Watch and others. But labor's case never seemed to hit home. Instead, conservatives have carried the day, playing on lurid stereotypes to hint that intimidation by unions is the real worry and that EFCA spells the end of secret ballots in the workplace and hence of democracy itself.

Before I go on, I should acknowledge that this whole thing might be a clever bit of jiu-jitsu by the unions. After all, the mere threat of EFCA has turned business almost Soviet in its feigned concern for the proletariat. The Chamber of Commerce is now exhorting the public to "stand up for workers' rights," running a "workforce freedom airlift," and, along with other trade associations, supporting groups with names like "Coalition for a Democratic Workplace" and "Workforce Fairness Institute."

EFCA's supporters may simply drop their bill's most controversial provisions, get some compromise measure passed, and spend the next 20 years reminding corporate America of the days when it was touchingly committed to "workers' rights" and a "democratic workplace."

If only. The sole clever reversal we have seen so far has been the familiar one where Democrats torpedo the most trustworthy member of their coalition.

Why does labor always get it in the neck?

First, there are those Democrats who don't care much for labor to begin with. Then there is the wide spectrum of Democratic donors and supporters who simply don't understand the problems of blue-collar life. They might dislike the religious right, but they didn't give money to Democratic political campaigns to increase union membership.

Or maybe it's just the money. Consider the lineup of lobbyists that retail giant Wal-Mart has assembled to make its case against EFCA. According to lobbying disclosure forms filed with the House and Senate we find that Wal-Mart's lobbyists include Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti (which employs former presidential candidate John Kerry's liaison to Congress during the 2004 campaign), a former legislative director for Rahm Emanuel, and a former assistant to Arkansas Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln.

Wal-Mart has also secured, according lobbying disclosure forms filed with Congress, the services of Tony Podesta, of the Podesta Group, one of the hottest lobby shops in Democratic D.C. Mr. Podesta is joined in pushing Wal-Mart's views on EFCA by a former assistant to Democrat Mark Pryor, the other senator from Arkansas.

The real standout on Wal-Mart's labor-issues roster, though, is D+P Creative Strategies, which wears its liberalism as proudly as last week's tax protestors did their three-cornered hats. According to its Web site, D+P "highlights partnership, shared benefits, and a commitment to advancing social justice goals." The disclosure form for its Wal-Mart EFCA activities lists a former assistant to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. The bio of its principal, Ingrid Duran, who is also listed as a Wal-Mart lobbyist, declares that the firm's mission is "to increase the role of corporate, legislative and philanthropic efforts in addressing the concerns of Latinos, women, and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) communities."

Maybe the day will come when those communities are correctly addressed by corporations and the rest. But when their "concerns" turn in the direction of bargaining with their employers, they're on their own.

Write to thomas@wsj.com


Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A13

National unions form coordinating committee; AFL-CIO president announces retirement plans

This article comes from Workaday Minnesota which is labor's mouthpiece for the Democratic Party in Minnesota and will report anything of benefit to the Democratic Party no matter how anti-labor it is.

This article is a perfect example of one of the major obstacles to working people organizing their own political party in this country.

Note the one paragraph that demonstrates the slavish worship by the corrupt labor-fakers of the Democratic Party:

Sweeney’s departure also comes at a key time for labor: Workers played a top role in electing pro-worker Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama to the White House and increasing pro-worker ranks in the Democratic-run Congress.

If someone could explain how anyone can consider Barack Obama "pro-worker" I would like to hear the specific reasons Obama should be considered "pro-worker."

Unions and workers sure did play a key role in electing Barack Obama. What did they get for the effort? Absolutely nothing.

Should we start looking at what Obama is doing to one of the two most active unions who supported him: the UAW? Or, how are the steelworkers (USW) faring with Obama in the White House? I understand Ron Gettelfinger and Leo Gerard might have their own answers; but, why not ask dues paying auto or steel workers who have been tossed by Barack Obama as if they were roadkill to a pack of wolves about their views of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party... not sure where to start looking for workers to question? Try the mines on Minnesota's Iron Range and the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant.

By the way, what kind of "retirement plan" does John Sweeney have? Maybe he should be given stock in Ford and General Motors :)

Anyways, anyhow; I bet Sweeney isn't going to have to worry about how to make a Social Security check last from month-to-month.

As for David Bonior, the former Congressman who led Democratic Party efforts to create "Compacts" for the mobsters running the Indian Gaming Industry leaving over two-million casino workers to fend for themselves without any rights under state and federal labor laws at poverty wages in smoke-filled casinos is bringing all these labor fakers together--- including the National Education Association whose pension funds now surpass the corrupt Teamsters Union pension funds in financing these mobster run casino operations... give me a break... these phonies aren't going to organize anything.

And they are talking about David Bonior heading up this new labor federation? David Bonior is even afraid of the UAW's lead lobbyist in Lansing, Michigan--- Nadine Nosal who, without questioning, loyally serves "pro-labor" Michigan Democrat Governor Granholm.

What is this? Joke time?

Alan L. Maki



Monday 13th April 2009

National unions form coordinating committee; AFL-CIO president announces retirement plans

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4002

By Mark Gruenberg

12 April 2009 WASHINGTON - AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney formally told top leaders of the federation that he will retire at the AFL-CIO Convention in September. At the same time, Sweeney, Change To Win leaders and National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel announced creation of the National Labor Coordinating Committee, a group of presidents of the nation’s 12 largest unions.
In arrangements worked out by American Rights At Work President David Bonior, the committee is the first concrete step towards reunifying the labor movement all under one roof. And that includes the 3.2-million-member NEA, which is both unaligned with either labor federation and the nation’s largest union.

Sweeney’s retirement was expected. The former Service Employees president, who will turn 75 in May 5, has led the now-56-union group since 1995, when his slate ousted incumbent Tom Donohue, who took over from Lane Kirkland months before.

Sweeney’s departure also comes at a key time for labor: Workers played a top role in electing pro-worker Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama to the White House and increasing pro-worker ranks in the Democratic-run Congress.

Increased political activism and mobilization, to enhance the chances of pro-worker legislation in Congress and nationwide, was and is a top Sweeney cause. The results were that unionists and their families were more than one-fifth of the electorate in 2008, almost double the share (12.4%) of union members in the workforce.

But even as Sweeney leaves, problems remain:

* Labor is still split. One of the leading events of Sweeney’s 14 years at the federation’s helm was the 2005 withdrawal of seven unions -- the United Food and Commercial Workers, the Teamsters, the Laborers, SEIU, UNITE HERE, the Carpenters and the United Farm Workers -- to form Change To Win. CTW wanted more emphasis on organizing and less on politics, but it has joined the AFL-CIO’s political efforts. The new coordinating committee is the first step to heal the split.

But Change To Win has its own problems: UNITE HERE has divided and a majority of its board voted to talk with Sweeney on re-affiliation with the AFL-CIO. UNITE HERE also charged SEIU was trying to take it over. SEIU has an internal battle with its biggest West Coast local. The Laborers, while not back in the AFL-CIO yet, are half-in, half-out, as members of its Building and Construction Trades Department.

* The Employee Free Choice Act, labor’s #1 legislative priority, which Obama supports and pledged to sign, faces a planned GOP Senate filibuster. It has yet to get the 60 committed senators it needs to break a fatal talkathon. A key senator, past co-sponsor Arlen Specter, R-Pa., defected under pressure from business and his party’s Radical Right, which wants to beat him in a primary next year. Several Democrats, notably Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have drifted away.

The bill would help level the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing and bargaining, by writing into law that workers -- not employers -- get to choose how they want their union recognized: Through an NLRB-run election or through the agency’s verification that the union collected authorization cards from a majority of employees at a worksite.

The bill would also increase penalties for labor law-breakers and mandate binding arbitration for a first contract if the two sides can’t agree within 120 days of starting bargaining. The Executive Committee spent part of its Meany Center session discussing the proposal’s prospects and labor’s nationwide campaign for it.

* Even without the CTW unions, the number of members in AFL-CIO-affiliated unions declined by a net of 43,326 from 2007 to 2008, and by 139,474 from 2003 to 2008, the federation’s own figures show.

That decline in turn has hurt the AFL-CIO’s finances, which depend on remittances -- calculated on a per-member basis -- from its 56 member unions, plus payments from its affinity credit card. The federation asked for voluntary contributions last year to pay for the big political push, but the payments fell short of goals.

* Successorship questions. Until Sweeney ousted Donohue at the 1995 convention in New York City, AFL-CIO presidents were often succeeded by their #2 officers, the secretary-treasurers. Current Secretary-Treasurer Richard L. Trumka, a former Mine Workers president, is a leading candidate to succeed Sweeney. But at least one CTW union that might return to the AFL-CIO would not do so if Trumka is in the top job. And other names have been floated for Sweeney’s post.

* Structure. Any new, unified labor federation must figure out its structure -- the consensus-based but sometimes-slow AFL-CIO, the leaner top-down CTW, or a mix of both. And it must figure out what to emphasize and what to leave to member unions.

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service.