Labor

Labor's 1%

2012-02-13T12:46:00.000-08:00

Labor's 1%

by Mark Zimmerman

February 3, 2012

The staggering level of wealth and income inequality has
finally become a focal point of political discussion and
action in the United States. While the major problem is
clearly the enormous increase in the concentration of wealth
among the extremely wealthy, perhaps best described as the
"top tenth of the one percent," those in the lower tiers of
the one percent have benefited as well.

Several months ago, David Cay Johnston, a columnist for
Reuters, published an article on the diversity of the "one-
percent." Using income data from 2009 tax returns, Johnston
concluded that "Economically, those just entering the top 1
percent have nothing in common with those in the top tenth
of the top 1 percent....while all those in the top 1 percent
are certainly well off, the vast majority still go to work
every day. Almost half of the top 1 percent, or 1.4 million
taxpayers, make $344,000 to $500,000." [1]

Unfortunately, a significant percentage of the leadership of
organized labor fits comfortably within that bottom half of
the top one-percent. Many union members, including this
author, would consider those salaries problematic.

There are those who take the position that the subject of
union leaders' salaries should not be a matter for public
discussion, that it will only give fodder to labor's
enemies. This is a legitimate concern. The right-wing,
anti-labor "Union Facts" website, for example, has for years
made an issue of the differences between the salaries of
union leaders and the members they represent.

But it may also be true that the levels of inequality
between union rank-and-file and elected officers, as well as
large differentials in salaries from union to union and
sector to sector, is detrimental to labor. There are
several reasons that this may be so: First, salaries that
can easily translate to a lavish lifestyle breed distrust
and disgust among dues-paying members. Second, when non-
union workers become aware of exorbitant salaries paid to
union officials - as when they happen upon the Union Facts
website - it provides yet another reason they may want to
stay away from union organizing efforts.

But, perhaps most importantly, we have to ask ourselves what
the impact of outsized salaries has on the psyches of their
recipients. Can a union president earning, say, between
$300,000 and $600,000, year after year, remain immune to the
trappings of wealth, power, and a luxurious lifestyle? Will
an officer accustomed to a $400,000 salary maintain a
burning desire to increase taxes on the wealthy or to rally
his members to fight inequality?

Between $600,000 and $50,000

The highest paid labor leader in the United States may be
Terence O'Sullivan, President of the Laborers International
Union (LIUNA/AFL-CIO). In 2010, the last year for which
figures are publicly available, O'Sullivan was paid nearly
$600,000. O'Sullivan's earnings for the previous three
years were comparable. [2]

Until last year, Richard Hughes served as the President of
the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA/AFL-CIO).
Hughes was elected to that position in 2007, becoming only
the eighth president in the ILA's 117 years of existence. In
2010, Hughes' last year as president, the ILA paid him
$464,000. Harold Daggett succeeded Hughes as President in
2011. In 2010, the ILA paid Daggett $399,000 in his
capacity as Vice President.

In 2010, AFSCME paid its president, Gerald McEntee, over
$400,000; Vincent Giblin of the Operating Engineers (AFL-
CIO) received $426,000; and Randy Weingarten of the American
Federation of Teachers (AFT/AFL-CIO) got $389,000. The
median salary for union members in the United States is less
than $48,000. [3]

There are 57 union leaders on the AFL-CIO's Executive
Council, representing nine million union members. Seventeen
of the executive council's members - thirty-percent - were
paid in excess of $300,000 in 2010. Most were presidents of
craft unions (ten from the building trades) and two were
from the public sector.

On the other hand, the seventeen lowest paid members of the
Executive Council had incomes ranging from $47,000 to
$161,000. Very few were from craft unions, but six were
from industrial unions.

Inequality and diversity

That the AFL-CIO leadership is male dominated and
overwhelmingly white is not new. The federation has
attempted to address that issue by creating additional
positions on its Executive Council. But those efforts have
gone only so far.

Despite the fact that women make up about 43% of union
members, only 19% of the AFL-CIO's Executive Council are
women. But among that top earning 30% - the $300,000+ club
- there is only one woman. In 2010, the average compensation
for the male members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council was
$252,000 while the average for the female members was
$194,000 - a 23% difference.

Of the nine black union officials who were on the AFL-CIO
Executive Council, only one had earnings above $300,000.
None of the four Hispanic members on the council had
anything close to that level. The average compensation for
the ten black and Hispanic members who received salaries
from their unions was $146,000 - nearly $100,000 less than
the council average. [4]

Should we be concerned about these levels of inequality?

It is easy enough to find justifications for paying elected
union leaders salaries that put them in the top one-percent:
These are demanding, high-stress jobs requiring many skills,
lots of travel, taxing schedules, etc. Salaries of union
officers leading organizations with hundreds of thousands of
members pale in comparison to corporate executives and
leaders of large not-for-profit organizations.

But, one has to wonder whether union leadership so far
removed economically from the rank-and-file, can
meaningfully represent the millions of members who live
paycheck to paycheck and have little or no expectation of
being able to retire securely. According to a recent study
that was reported on the website Inequality.org, "The life
experiences of the wealthy....leaves the rich less
compassionate and altruistic than people of more modest
means." [5]

Union presidents have a way of staying in office for an
extended period. Gerald McEntee of AFSCME is retiring after
30 years as President of AFSCME. Terence O'Sullivan is now
in his thirteenth year as President of the Laborers. With
salaries between $400,000 and $600,000 a year, one can only
imagine the lifestyle they lead - and wonder how that
impacts on the decisions they must make on behalf of their
membership.

There are good reasons for concluding that having union
leaders in the top one-percent of income earners does harm
to organized labor. We can start by asking the following
questions: Should an elected union official be paid more
than the president of the United States or a member of
Congress? [6] Can a certain salary level be a corrupting
influence - how many people can resist the trappings of an
upper-class lifestyle when they receive an upper-class
income year after year? Are the benefits of large salaries
worth the costs - how much does the perception of corruption
or elitism harm labor's image both within its ranks and
among the population at large? Finally, do the enormous
salary differentials between building and construction
trades presidents and those in other labor sectors
negatively impact on the functioning of the AFL-CIO?

The Occupy Wall Street movement has not only highlighted the
issue of income inequality. It has also put forth a
challenge to organized labor in the form of the implicit
question the OWS movement raises: Where has organized labor
been? In light of that question, the uncomfortable facts
discussed above may provide at least part of the answer.

[Mark Zimmerman has been involved with organized labor for
over thirty years. He can be contacted at
iamzimmerman@gmail.com ]

Footnotes:

1.
http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-
johnston/2011/10/25/beyond-the-1-percent/

2. 2007-10 LM2's. See below for a full list of AFL-CIO
Executive Council and CTW Leadership Council salaries.

3. Bureau of Labor Statistics -
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

4. AFL-CIO Executive Council members average union-paid
salary was $239,000 in 2010.

5. Understanding Our National Empathy Deficit,
http://inequality.org/empathy-and-wealth/

6.$400,000 and $174,000 respectively.

=====

AFL-CIO Executive Council 2010
Union                          Members        Income

(President unless otherwise noted                2010 [7]

Terence O'Sullivan                480,000          $571,000
Laborers (LIUNA)

Richard Hughes                    44,000          $464,000
East Coast Longshoremen (ILA)

Vincent Giblin                  390,000          $426,000
Operating Engineers (IUOE)

Gerald McEntee                1,465,000      $400,000
AFSCME

Randy Weingarten                860,000          $389,000
American Federation of Teachers (AFT)

Mark Ayers                        NA            $380,000
Building & Construction Trades (BCTD)

Newton Jones                    61,000            $379,000
Boilermakers (BBF)

Patrick Finley                    40,000          $361,000
Plasterers and Cement Masons (OPCM)

Capt. John Prater              44,000          $328,000
Airline Pilots Association, (ALPA

William Lucy [8]              214,000          $322,000
Postal Workers (APWU)

Edwin Hill                    685,000          $322,000
Electrical Workers (IBEW)

James Williams                    117,000          $314,000
Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT)

James Boland                    84,000          $308,000
Bricklayers (BAC)

William Hite                    341,000          $306,000
Plumbers and Pipefitters (PPF)

Michael J. Sullivan                136,000          $304,000
Sheet Metal Workers (SMW)

Harold Schaitberger              296,000          $303,000
Firefighters (IAFF)

Matthew Loeb                      112,000          $300,000
Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE)

Malcolm Futhey Jr.              53,000          $299,000
United Transportation Union (UTU)

Robert Scardelletti              45,000          $298,000
Transportation Communications (TCU)

John Wilhelm                    230,000          $285,000
UNITE-HERE

Richard Trumka                    8,455,000          $277,000
President, AFL-CIO

Walter Wise [9]                  122,000          $269,000
Gen'l Secretary, Ironworkers (BSIOW)

Michael Goodwin                  99,000          $260,000
Office & Professional Employees (OPEIU)

James Little                    118,000          $256,000
Transport Workers Union (TWU)

Thomas Buffenbarger                594,000          $250,000
Machinists (IAM)

Arlene Holt Baker              8,455,000          $246,000
Executive VP, AFL-CIO

Frank Hurt                      85,000          $228,000
Bakery, Confectionary (BCTGMI)

Nancy Wohlforth                  99,000          $203,000
Secretary-Treas., OPEIU

D. Michael Landford              50,000          $199,000
Utility Workers (UWUA)

Liz Shuler                      8,455,000      $188,000
Sec'y.-Treas., AFL-CIO

Larry Cohen                      504,000          $185,000
Communication Workers (CWA)

Frederic Rolando                286,000          $182,000
Letter Carriers (NALC)

Loretta Johnson                  860,000          $182,000
Executive VP, AFT

Gregory Junemann                67,000          $180,000
Professional, Technical Employees (IFPTE)

John Gage                        279,000          $170,000
Government Employees (AFGE)

Cecil Roberts                    76,000          $161,000
Mineworkers (UMW)

Leo Gerard                        581,000      $161,000
Steelworkers (USW)

Lee Saunders                      1,465,000    $158,000
Secretary-Treasurer, AFSCME

Roseann DeMoro                    131,000      $154,000
Exec. Dir., National Nurses United (NNU)

Lawrence Hanley                    192,000      $146,000
VP, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU)

Bob King                          377,000      $146,000
United Auto Workers, (UAW)

Clifford Guffey                    214,000      $144,000
Postal Workers, APWU

General Holiefield                377,000      $133,000
Vice President, UAW

Fred Redmond                      581,000      $130,000
VP, USW

Bruce Smith                        28,000      $127,000
Glass Molders (GMP)

Rogelio Flores                    279,000      $125,000
Vice President, AFGE

Robert McEllrath                  37,000      $116,000
West Coast Longshoremen (ILWU)

Diann Woodard                      20,000      $100,000
School Administrators

Michael Sacco                      32,000      $100,000
Seafarers (SIU)

Veda Shook                          60,000      $88,000
Flight Attendants (CWA)

James Andrews [10]                  NA        $85,000
North Carolina AFL-CIO

Baldemar Velasquez                  NA        $47,000
Farm Laborers (FLOC)

Robbie Sparks [11]                  NA          $1,050
Business Manager, IBEW 2127

Roberta Reardon*                    65,000        0
Radio & Television Artists (AFTRA)

Clyde Rivers**                      190,000        0
California School Employees Association

Maria Elena Darazo^                      NA        0
President, Los Angeles, AFL-CIO

Ken Howard*                          128,000      0
President, Screen Actors (SAG)

======

Change to Win Leadership Council

Affiliation                            Members        Income

James P. Hoffa                      1,327,000      $357,000
Teamsters

Joseph Hansen                      1,290,000      $321,000
UFCW

Mary Kay Henry                    1,917,000      $214,000
Service Employees (SEIU)

Tom Woodruff                        1,917,000      $206,000
Executive VP, SEIU

Eliseo Medina                      1,917,000      $205,000
Secretary-Treasurer, SEIU

Geralyn Lutty                      1,290,000      $176,000
International VP, UFCW

Arturo Rodriguez                    5,200        $81,000
United Farm Workers (UFWA)

Sources:

[7] As reported on each union's 2010 LM-2 report unless
otherwise noted. Includes salary and other compensation as
listed on each union's LM2 report, Schedules 11 or 12,
excluding disbursements for official business. Benefits
such as health insurance are not included.

[8] Lucy was AFSCME's Secretary-Treasurer until he retired
in 2010. This salary figure is what he received in his last
full year at AFSCME (2009). He continues to receive this
salary as a pension benefit. His AFSCME earnings for 2010
were over $800,000, presumably a severance package.

[9] The President of the Ironworkers Union, Joseph Hunt, was
paid $355,000 in 2010.

[10] Salary for fiscal year ended 6/30/09 - source IRS Form
990.

[11] It is unclear what this reported compensation
represents.

* Not compensated by their unions.

** Clyde Rivers is retired from CSEA. His current
relationship with CSEA is not known.

^ Most recent IRS 990 (2009).

Tell Richard Trumka, Leo Gerard, Amy Dean, Joe Hansen and Jimmy Hoffa to get up off their asses and strike while the iron is hot

2011-11-03T07:32:00.001-07:00

by Alan L. Maki on Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 9:01am

Now is the time for working people to move into action against Wal-mart with a massive organizing campaign. In my opinion, any campaign to boycott Wal-mart at this time should be in conjunction with a full-scale international union organizing campaign with Wal-mart being taken on by workers across the globe. With Occupy Wall Street spreading across the globe like a prairie fire on a windy day, this would be a perfect time to launch an international campaign to organize Wal-mart workers. Wal-mart is now the largest employer in the world--- what better target for Occupy Wall Street than one of the largest and most profitable of Wall Street's multi-national companies? All the ingredients are now here for a victory--- Wal-mart workers want a union and there is massive anti-Wall Street sentiment sweeping the globe which would make a consumer boycott very effective. I think people like Richard Trumka, Leo Gerard and Amy Dean need to be explaining why they are not thinking along these lines and throwing all their resources into this kind of working class struggle instead of pissing away the money of union members supporting Barack Obama who is obviously Wall Street's president. Wal-mart brings its products into this country by ship in containers from the low-wage areas of the world where these commodities are being produced and the longshore union is in a mode to fight. A consumer boycott and Wal-mart not being able to get its goods off the ships would make for a huge working class organizing victory. Now is the time to strike while the iron is hot.

Have you had enough? New Party on the horizon

2011-11-01T18:52:00.001-07:00

Rocky Anderson

418 Douglas Street

Salt Lake City, UTAH 84102

E-mail: rockyandersonrocky@yahoo.com

Press Release - October 21, 2011

Have you had enough?

New Party on the horizon

The former Mayor of Salt Lake City and Executive Director of High Road for Human Rights, Rocky Anderson, calls for the formation of a new political party and a sustained movement committed to the public interest.

Two months ago, Anderson “divorced himself” from what he referred to as “the spineless, gutless Democratic Party.” Responding to an email from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which showed as the subject, “Standing strong,” Anderson wrote: “How dare you send an email with the subject line ‘Standing strong.’ You didn’t do it on Iraq, you didn’t do it on torture, you didn’t do it on signing statements, you haven’t done it onAfghanistan, you haven’t done it on defense spending, you haven’t done it on real health care reform, you haven’t done it on the debt ceiling fiasco.”

(Rolly: Rocky Anderson says adieu to the Democratic Party,” The Salt Lake Tribune, August 12, 2011.)

Anderson continued: “I’m done with the Democratic Party… I think the answer is a new political party that actually will advocate for and promote the interests of the public rather than the narrow interests of the wealthy who bought and paid for not only Congress but the White House… The Constitution has been eviscerated while Democrats have stood by with nary a whimper. It is a gutless, unprincipled party, bought and paid for by the same interests that buy and pay for the Republican Party.”

(Romboy, “Former S.L. mayor Rocky Anderson divorces himself from ‘gutless’ Democratic Party,” Deseret News, August 13, 2011.)

This country needs a new, powerful party that can win elections, according to Anderson. “The pensions and other savings accounts of the middle class in this country have been decimated. The only way out is another party. I would call it, frankly, a second party that actually represents the interests of the American people. There isn’t a real opposition force in Washington, D.C., any more, and we the people have the capacity to change that -- and we must if our republic is going to survive. I consider myself an Independent, but I would be very pleased to work with others to form not just a political party to run another campaign, but to launch a sustained movement for major change in this country.”

(“Rocky: Not a Democrat,” (Interview with Rocky Anderson by Lexie Levitt), City Weekly,September 26, 2011.)

Anderson said that people are fed up with the Democratic and Republican parties, Congress, and the Obama administration to the point of being ready to support a new party that rejects the corporatism and militarism of the two “Wall Street lap-dog” major parties.

The polls support Anderson’s view that the people of the United States are desirous of a new party, and bold, new leadership, like never before. Patrick Caddell and Douglas Shoen have written:

“The United States is in the midst of what we would both call a pre-Revolutionary moment, and there is widespread support for fundamental change in the system. An increasing number of Americans are now searching beyond the two parties for bold and effective leadership.”

(Caddell and Schoen, “Expect a Third-Party Candidate in 2012,” The Wall Street Journal, August 25, 2011.)

"Have you had enough?" asks Anderson. “Would you support the formation of a new party that will commit to:

affordable universal health care;
an end to the wars;
a significant reduction in the military budget and an end to the military-industrial-congressional complex;
investigation of illegal conduct, including war crimes, by executive officials during the current and prior administrations;
investigation of the events on 9/11 to answer significant questions that have been raised;
prosecution for illegal conduct leading to the economic melt-down;
disincentives for U.S. companies to send jobs overseas;
employee and environmental safeguards in trade agreements;
implementation of major domestic jobs and infrastructure programs;
an end to the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy;
campaign finance reform to end the corrupting influence of money in politics;
treat substance abuse within a public health framework rather than as a criminal matter;
repeal the PATRIOT Act;
compassionate and rational immigration reform;
marriage equality;
an end to subsidies for oil and gas companies;
a ban on a Canada-to-Mexico tar sands pipeline;
air quality protection, including stricter ozone limits; and
aggressive action and leadership on the climate crisis and the environment?”

Rocky Anderson has been in the process of contacting some of America’s leading social, environmental and political activists with the goal of creating a powerful, broad-based political alternative to the increasingly unpopular Republican and Democratic Parties. He intends that the new party will have candidates in local, state, and federal races throughout the nation.

Anderson plans on hosting a meeting soon between leaders in various sectors of the country in order to draft a new platform and a long-term strategy capable of attracting a majority of voters, including millions of dissatisfied Democrats and Republicans who, until now, had nowhere else to go.

Anderson has stated his intention to do what is possible to get on the ballots in all 50 states and to campaign for candidates aggressively in all states. "The Democratic and Republican Parties have acted as if voters have no other real options. The people of this country will demonstrate that we, indeed, have another option - a party that will work in the public interest, rather than for the defense contractors, the health insurance companies, and the rapacious financial institutions that have caused such economic havoc in our nation and the world."

Anderson anticipates a broad-based coalition, similar to the one built by the New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP), which won impressive political gains in the Canadian federal elections last May. The NDP is the political party that brought universal health care to the Canadian people.

Press info: Mackenzie Scott - Tel. 801-520-0491

Rocky Anderson - Tel. 801-557-9007

E-mail: rockyandersonrocky@yahoo.com

Why Labor Needs to Explore a New Political Direction!

2011-10-29T10:50:00.000-07:00

Why Labor Needs to Explore a New Political Direction!

"The definition of insanity is repeating the same failed thing over and over expecting a different outcome"- Albert Einstein

By Pancho Valdez

I joined my first union in December of 1971 when I was employed with the San Antonio Independent School District. As a member of the now defunct SEIU Local 84 I eagerly voted for Democrats as back then they appeared to be sympathetic to the cause of organized labor. As time passed I eventually learned how wrong I was. However one must remember I was only 19 at the time and what did I know about political reality?

By the mid 70's I was working in Houston and a member of several unions. The union that I gained the most experience and success with was Teamsters Local 968 while I worked for the old GAF Floor Tile Plant. It wasn't soon after that I learned just how evasive and dishonest to workers elected politicians could be. My faithin the Democratic Party was beginning to deteriorate.

In the early 90's I learned about a project that the late Anthony Mazzochi was involved in. Mazzochi then an officer with the Oil,Chemical & Atomic Workers was proposing that organized labor should create and support a political party controlled by workers, rather than corporations. At about that time President Clinton signed into law the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement aka NAFTA. Despite labor having coughed up $35 million for his campaign against Republican Robert Dole, Clinton in typical neo-liberal fashion gave workers the shafta with NAFTA!

Mazzochi's idea was becoming more and more interesting to me as the Democrats willingly betrayed the American working class as well as the Mexican working class in their shameless support for NAFTA! In the late 90's the Labor Party went from just an idea to becoming a reality in it's founding convention in Cleveland, Ohio. Initially I along with several other local trade unionists

became quite excited and involved with the Labor Party, unfortunately our zeal ended with the party failing to challenge either Democrats or Republicans across the nation with the exception of S. Carolina. Today the Labor Party exists on paper, but the need remains even more so that those earlier days.

As I write this article I have just learned that President Obama signed into law trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and S. Korea despite organized labor's opposition and the fact that these "trade agreements" will cost the U.S. close to 150.000 jobs!

While I can understand Obama's pandering to the corporate elite, I cannot accept the fact that the AFL-CIO and other major labor union bodies continue to blindly support Obama and the Democratic Party. How many more betrayals does organized labor need to experience before it says; Enough is enough??

Labor's dependency on a party that continually betrays it's interests reminds me of the battered woman who continues to fall for the abusive partner's lies and then continues to get beaten up!

Along with the Democratic Party's/President Obama's shameless support for the phony trade agreements, Obama has publicly supported Arne Duncan's attack on public school teachers and their unions blaming them for the many failures of our public school system! Yet both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association have both tossed in their full support for his re-election! Aside from the aforementioned Obama's support for the Employee Free Choice legislation quickly sputtered out and is nowhere on the horizon of the Democratic Party's platform. Yet organized labor continues to blindly follow and support the Democratic Party.

I realize that many trade unionists have this deeply ingrained belief that the DP is the party "friendly" to labor, citing the accomplishments of President Franklin D. Roosevelt with the New Deal. Under the New Deal Roosevelt signed into law Social Security, unemployment benefits, public housing, the Works Project Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, the National Labor Relations Act, all programs that benefited the American working class during Great Depression I. Unfortunatley many trade unionists are not aware that the Democrats did not give us anything! These vital programs were signed into law as workers especially those affiliated with the left led CIO demanded these benefits through mass demonstrations, sit down strikes and other militant actions in the streets and job sites! Roosevelt in order to avoid out and out revolution was forced to sign these programs/benefits into law!

Today we are in the midst of Great Depression II as over 25 million U.S. workers are unemployed and countless others remain underemployed! Yet our current president has publicly stated that he is "counting on the private sector" to provide the U.S. needed jobs. THE PRIVATE SECTOR SENT MOST OF OUR BASIC INDUSTRIAL JOBS OVERSEAS! Duh! Unfortunatley the current labor movement lacks sufficient left wingers leading it and/or the vision to see that a corporatist president isn't going to do very much on behalf of workers and their families!

The idea of the late Tony Mazzochi is still very relevant today. Especially in light of the reactionary assault on labor and the austerity forced upon us as corporations continue to rake in record profits! We must continue to advocate for a genuine people's party that will speak out for workers and their families, people of color, the environment, peace, gays & lesbians and others who have been ignored and betrayed by both the Democratic and Republican parties! Above all this new party must refuse to accept corporate bribes disguised as "campaign donations" and fully support our federal Constitution, something the two major parties continue to violate!

In closing I urge all trade unionists to give serious consideration to what I have tried to communicate to you. My hope is by 2016 we will have in place a genuine people's party that will rise from the actions of the 99% in the streets across the nation!

Pancho Valdez is a trade unionist residing in San Antonio and is an active member of the Bexar County Greens Party.

For good jobs with real living wages provide the American people with free health care and free child care

2011-09-09T05:17:00.001-07:00

For good jobs at real living wages provide the American people with free health care and free child care.

Why this subservience by organized labor to Obama and the Democrats? There are plenty of working people, including union members, who are fed up with both the Democrats and the Republicans and workers have a right to expect that organized labor will show the courage to lead and not follow Obama and the Democrats into the abyss of wars and poverty.

Obama made the most politically self-serving speech I have ever heard using the problems of the people in a most demagogic way that only a Hitler or Mussolini could appreciate.

While I support Medicare For All as a step towards a National Public Health Care System, I fail to see why we should continue to advocate it since the Wall Street bribed crowd of politicians is never going to budge or bend in accepting it.

In fact, it is the private delivery of health care with Medicare For All that has failed to bring out the American people in large enough numbers to force Congress to consider it.

People see how greedy doctors are in milking and bilking Medicare; the fraud in the system by the doctors and others who aren’t satisfied with the enormous profits the government provides them with to begin with is disgusting that they then have to engage in outright fraud is well-known to all, and hundreds of these crooked doctors are being prosecuted for this fraud.

The solution is a National Public Health Care System— everybody in, nobody out; no-fees/no-premiums, comprehensive and all-inclusive, pre-natal to grave, universal— publicly funded, publicly administered, publicly delivered.

Such a health care system would require over 30,000 primary health care centers in communities and neighborhoods where primary health care would be provided for free.

Want jobs?

You got jobs; jobs, jobs and more jobs— over ten-million new good paying union jobs.

All this crap about “private industry” is just that; elephant and donkey dung.

The government providing public sector jobs where private profiteers gorging themselves at the public trough has to end.

A National Public Health Care System would be funded by ending these dirty imperialist wars and taxing the rich. The alternative— or in combination— would be financing the National Public Health Care System the same way that Social Security or our public schools or the Post Office is funded.

Isn’t it obvious to all that for any change to take place in this country we are going to have to build massive and powerful movements in the streets supported by a new third party capable of challenging Wall Street for power?

Well, why not make a National Public Health Care System and a National Public Child Care System the centerpieces of our struggle for people’s power?

A National Public Child Care System would provide another five-million new good-paying union jobs. Fund it the same way. Tax-the-hell out of the rich until they cry real tears— after all, it is the wealth that we, as working people, have created.

I am sure all the great “philanthropists” like Warren Buffett will be pleased.

Peace + tax-the-rich = Health Care + Child Care + 15 million Jobs; it is a very simple equation any child can understand— all it takes is for us to understand that it takes a powerful people’s movement creating a ruckus in the streets backed up by a working class led people’s party at the polls to achieve.

We really do have to educate and organize to unite the American people to fight against Wall Street for the kind of country we really want.

We need to understand what the Dumb Donkeys like Obama are desperately trying to obscure: The way to create jobs is by putting people to work solving the pressing problems of the people where the government becomes the employer— not of second choice or last choice— but where the government becomes the employer of first choice. I have yet to hear a teacher or any other public employee complain about receiving a nice government check with good benefits… in fact, I have never seen any of these politicians who decry government programs and “big government” turn down their government issued checks.

Think about it; if every single member of the House and Senate was a politician just like Barack Obama would we have the kind of country we want? Hell no!

The Democrats, even the "best" of them offer no more than "economic populism" free from any discussion about the role played by war and militarism when what we need is an anti-imperialist politics which brings to the American people the true cost of these dirty wars and how they kill jobs just like they kill people as we are deprived of health care and child care and the rest of our social programs and our standard of living is decimated through austerity measures to pay for these dirty wars that no one wanted to begin with and even fewer people support as the bills come due.

How is Barack Obama's Wall Street war economy working for you?

Fake Political Crises and Real Economic Crises – A Call for Leadership and for Action

2011-08-14T10:13:00.000-07:00

How is Barack Obama's Wall Street War economy working for you?

Alan Maki - Director of Organizing, Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council, carries sign in St. Paul, Minnesota peace march asking, "How is the war economy working for you?"

"There is no way to fund what we must do as a nation without bringing our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. The militarization of our foreign policy has proven to be a costly mistake. It is time to invest at home."
AFL-CIO
Executive Council
August 3, 2011

From Amaya Tune

AFL-CIO Media Outreach Specialist

A statement (August 3, 2011) from the AFL-CIO Executive Council:

Fake Political Crises and Real Economic Crises – A Call for Leadership and for Action

The United States is in a continuing and severe jobs crisis. Our economy is growing at less than 2 percent per year, and growth is slowing. Official unemployment is 9.2 percent and rising—driven now by mass layoffs of teachers, first responders and other public employees. The real unemployment rate is almost twice as high—once labor market dropouts and involuntary part-time work are taken into account.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There are real solutions to the jobs crisis, but real solutions require government action.

Yet Washington is inexplicably focused on measures that will make the situation worse—both in the short and long run. Our nation’s leaders are offering working people the choice between bad and worse policies. Instead of addressing our profound economic crisis, they are adding to it an unending series of fake political crises.

Real wages have been stagnant for three decades and are now falling. The housing market, the largest market of any kind in our country, continues its downward slide, driven by the collapse of an enormous bubble. Millions of American families have been or will be thrown out of their homes by banks, guaranteeing that this drag on our economy will continue for the foreseeable future. Our trade deficit keeps growing. We invest less and less in our nation’s infrastructure while unemployment in construction is nearly double the national average. Veterans return home and struggle to find work. Our education budgets at every level are shrinking, and fewer and fewer of us have adequate health insurance or a pension.

Republican congressional leaders have made their agenda crystal clear—paralyze the government and hold our economy hostage until a multitrillion-dollar ransom is paid to their contributors in the form of tax cuts for the wealthy and for multinational corporations. They will not rest until they have succeeded in dismantling the American government and the American Dream—so their wealthy contributors can be sure that their taxes will remain the lowest in the developed world for the remainder of their days.

Unfortunately, far too many Democrats have been either silent or complicit in the Republicans’ scheme. We expect Democrats at every level of government to stand tall for progressive principles, working families and the American labor movement. We need their leadership—not their excuses or apologies.

But this agenda has been clear for years. The congressional Republicans are doing nothing more than escalating the Bush agenda—using the disingenuous rhetoric of fiscal responsibility to transfer wealth to the rich, dismantle the social safety net and increase the deficit. If our country is going to have a bright and fair future, we need a completely different direction—toward a high-wage, high-skill, high-productivity economy, driven by investment in our workforce and our infrastructure, and our public services.

There is no way to fund what we must do as a nation without bringing our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. The militarization of our foreign policy has proven to be a costly mistake. It is time to invest at home.

Our unfair and inadequate tax system is at the heart of what is wrong with our economy and our society. Our government gives away tax breaks to billionaires and corporations while letting our infrastructure deteriorate and cutting aid for heating oil for the poor. We cannot build a competitive economy, pay our bills as a nation or address out-of-control economic inequality until we adopt a fair system of taxation.

Instead, policymakers are obsessed with cutting government spending with a meat ax—heedless of the consequences for our economy or our compassion.

In an economy beset by mass unemployment, inadequate demand, tight credit and asset deflation, massive cuts in government spending will be disastrous—particularly cuts that cause layoffs or reduce Americans’ incomes, such as cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. These deep cuts could easily catapult our economy straight into a double-dip recession, if not a Great Depression. And we run the risk of dragging the rest of the global economy down with us.

In an economy that runs chronic trade deficits of more than a half-trillion dollars a year and that has lost more than 50,000 manufacturing plants in the last 10 years, the last thing we should do is rush to pass more trade agreements built on the model that led to the hollowing out of U.S. manufacturing—like the Korea, Colombia and Panama agreements. And we need to reform our tax code to end the incentives and rewards for offshoring jobs—not lock in a corporate tax code that only taxes U.S. earnings, essentially inviting companies to move operations offshore and placing responsible employers at a disadvantage.

In an economy where tax revenues have hit a modern low of 14.9 percent of GDP and where the wealthy have seen the greatest income gains and the lowest tax rates since the Great Depression, there is absolutely no economic rationale for cutting tax rates or continuing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. In an economy where real wages have been falling for a generation, why would we go all out to silence workers, deprive them of basic workplace protections, defund the agencies that protect us, interfere with those who seek to enforce the laws and cozy up to foreign governments where workers are murdered with impunity when they try to organize?

Working people do not want a kinder, gentler or more reasonable version of the policies that caused the economic crisis, that dismantled the American Dream and that have undermined our democracy for a generation. We demand a completely different approach—we want jobs, prosperity, fairness and, most of all, a future for all of us.

Today, we must fight against the destructive ideas in play in Washington and in our state capitals. That is why the labor movement’s voice is clear—we oppose any cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits—no matter where they come from and that includes the Oval Office. We need a tax code that asks the rich to pay their fair share. We oppose corporate tax reform that is merely “revenue neutral” amid calls for “shared sacrifice.” We oppose the Korea, Panama and the Colombia free trade agreements. And we will fight with every means we have against those who would take away the right to vote through a new generation of poll taxes and literacy tests.

But we cannot build a future by watering down bad ideas—or even by stopping them. Working people demand a politics of real solutions. Of good jobs—on the scale needed to make a difference. Of investment in our future—in our infrastructure, our health, our schools, our people. Of fair taxes and fair trade. And, most of all, a future where working people have a voice in our republic, in the workplace and the voting booth.

America wants to work, and we need a political system that will deliver on that urgent imperative. Today, real solutions are at hand, and in the months ahead, we are going to fight for them.

We will unite not only workers and our unions but a broad base of allies behind a comprehensive initiative that will invest in America, provide opportunity for all, ensure dignity through work and save our social safety net. We must build on and expand vital partnerships with women’s, civil rights and minority organizations, and environmental, immigration, low-income, senior and faith groups. We also will strive to build alliances with business where possible, such as the work we have done together with a wide range of business groups to support investment in our nation’s infrastructure.

We will promote a job creation agenda that will include direct federal investment as an alternative to tax cuts. A jobs agenda that will respond to the continuing high unemployment rates suffered by workers in the construction industry, the bleeding of jobs in the manufacturing sector, and the hemorrhaging of employment in the state and local government sectors. We will fight for:

- Maintaining income support and consumer spending, including extending the current federal extended benefits program for the unemployed, which expires in December;

- Rebuilding and modernizing critical national infrastructure to promote strong economic activity, including a robustly funded, multiyear Surface Transportation Act that expands our highway and bridge system and addresses the transit jobs crisis, and by creating an infrastructure bank that funds good jobs and helps rebuild our manufacturing base through standards and tools that will enhance the domestic supply chain;

- Enforcing our trade laws, fighting against China’s currency manipulation to help our manufacturing base recover, and renewing a robust, long-term Trade Adjustment Assistance Act ;

- Establishing a program of countercyclical assistance to create and stabilize jobs in state and local governments, including adequate federal aid and permanent programs of direct local job creation and federal Medicaid matching rates that reflect fluctuations in unemployment rates;

-Helping the unemployed and families threatened with the loss of their homes;

-Adopting a fair tax system, including an end to tax breaks for companies going offshore and a financial transaction tax that asks those who caused the financial crisis to help pay for its consequences;

-And for every good idea that creates jobs and helps us take on the great challenge of rebuilding the American Dream.

Most of all, this is a time when everyone who cares about our future must stand together. We must organize, and we must have vision. The labor movement calls upon all who see a future for America that is better than our past to join us. It is time not for compromise but for vision, not for downsizing our dreams, but for seizing our future.

***

This entry originally appeared at the AFL-CIO Media Center.

Please distribute widely.

Fake Political Crisis and Real Economic Crises - A Call for Leadership and for Action

2011-08-14T07:23:00.001-07:00

Fake Political Crises and Real Economic Crises - A Call for Leadership and for Action

by Alan L. Maki on Saturday, August 13, 2011 at 3:13pm

Fake Political Crises and Real Economic Crises - A Call for Leadership and for Action

August 03, 2011

AFL-CIO Executive Council Statement

Washington, DC

The United States is in a continuing and severe jobs crisis. Our economy is growing at less than 2 percent per year, and growth is slowing. Official unemployment is 9.2 percent and rising-driven now by mass layoffs of teachers, first

responders and other public employees. The real unemployment rate is almost twice as high-once labor market dropouts and involuntary part-time work are taken into account.

It doesn't have to be this way. There are real solutions to the jobs crisis, but real solutions require government action.

Yet Washington is inexplicably focused on measures that will make the situation worse-both in the short and long run. Our nation's leaders are offering working people the choice between bad and worse policies. Instead of addressing our profound economic crisis, they are adding to it an unending series of fake political crises.

Real wages have been stagnant for three decades and are now falling. The housing market, the largest market of any kind in our country, continues its downward slide, driven by the collapse of an enormous bubble. Millions of American families have been or will be thrown out of their homes by banks, guaranteeing that this drag on our economy will continue for the foreseeable future. Our trade deficit keeps growing. We invest less and less in our nation's infrastructure while unemployment in construction is nearly double the national average. Veterans return home and struggle to find work. Our education budgets at every level are shrinking, and fewer and fewer of us have adequate health insurance or a pension.

Republican congressional leaders have made their agenda crystal clear-paralyze the government and hold our economy hostage until a multitrillion-dollar ransom is paid to their contributors in the form of tax cuts for the wealthy and for multinational corporations. They will not rest until they have succeeded in dismantling the American government and the American Dream-so their wealthy contributors can be sure that their taxes will remain the lowest in the developed world for the remainder of their days.

Unfortunately, far too many Democrats have been either silent or complicit in the Republicans' scheme. We expect Democrats at every level of government to stand tall for progressive principles, working families and the American labor movement. We need their leadership-not their excuses or apologies.

But this agenda has been clear for years. The congressional Republicans are doing nothing more than escalating the Bush agenda-using the disingenuous rhetoric of fiscal responsibility to transfer wealth to the rich, dismantle the social safety net and increase the deficit. If our country is going to have a bright and fair future, we need a completely different direction-toward a high-wage, high-skill, high-productivity economy, driven by investment in our workforce and our infrastructure, and our public services.

There is no way to fund what we must do as a nation without bringing our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. The militarization of our foreign policy has proven to be a costly mistake. It is time to invest at home.

Our unfair and inadequate tax system is at the heart of what is wrong with our economy and our society. Our government gives away tax breaks to billionaires and corporations while letting our infrastructure deteriorate and cutting aid for heating oil for the poor. We cannot build a competitive economy, pay our bills as a nation or address out-of-control economic inequality until we adopt a fair system of taxation.

Instead, policymakers are obsessed with cutting government spending with a meat ax-heedless of the consequences for our economy or our compassion.

In an economy beset by mass unemployment, inadequate demand, tight credit and asset deflation, massive cuts in government spending will be disastrous-particularly cuts that cause layoffs or reduce Americans' incomes, such as cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. These deep cuts could easily catapult our economy straight into a double-dip recession, if not a Great Depression. And we run the risk of dragging the rest of the global economy down with us.

In an economy that runs chronic trade deficits of more than a half-trillion dollars a year and that has lost more than 50,000 manufacturing plants in the last 10 years, the last thing we should do is rush to pass more trade agreements built on the model that led to the hollowing out of U.S. manufacturing-like the Korea, Colombia and Panama agreements. And we need to reform our tax code to end the incentives and rewards for offshoring jobs-not lock in a corporate tax code that only taxes U.S. earnings, essentially inviting companies to move operations offshore and placing responsible employers at a disadvantage.

In an economy where tax revenues have hit a modern low of 14.9 percent of GDP and where the wealthy have seen the greatest income gains and the lowest tax rates since the Great Depression, there is absolutely no economic rationale for cutting tax rates or continuing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. In an economy where real wages have been falling for a generation, why would we go all out to silence workers, deprive them of basic workplace protections, defund the agencies that protect us, interfere with those who seek to enforce the laws and cozy up to foreign governments where workers are murdered with impunity when they try to organize?

Working people do not want a kinder, gentler or more reasonable version of the policies that caused the economic crisis, that dismantled the American Dream and that have undermined our democracy for a generation. We demand a completely different approach-we want jobs, prosperity, fairness and, most of all, a future for all of us.

Today, we must fight against the destructive ideas in play in Washington and in our state capitals. That is why the labor movement's voice is clear-we oppose any cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits-no matter where they come from and that includes the Oval Office. We need a tax code that asks the rich to pay their fair share. We oppose corporate tax reform that is merely "revenue neutral" amid calls for "shared sacrifice." We oppose the Korea, Panama and the Colombia free trade agreements. And we will fight with every means we have against those who would take away the right to vote through a new generation of poll taxes and literacy tests.

But we cannot build a future by watering down bad ideas-or even by stopping them. Working people demand a politics of real solutions. Of good jobs-on the scale needed to make a difference. Of investment in our future-in our infrastructure, our health, our schools, our people. Of fair taxes and fair trade. And, most of all, a future where working people have a voice in our republic, in the workplace and the voting booth.

America wants to work, and we need a political system that will deliver on that urgent imperative. Today, real solutions are at hand, and in the months ahead, we are going to fight for them.

We will unite not only workers and our unions but a broad base of allies behind a comprehensive initiative that will invest in America, provide opportunity for all, ensure dignity through work and save our social safety net. We must build on and expand vital partnerships with women's, civil rights and minority organizations, and environmental, immigration, low-income, senior and faith groups. We also will strive to build alliances with business where possible, such as the work we have done together with a wide range of business groups to support investment in our nation's infrastructure.

We will promote a job creation agenda that will include direct federal investment as an alternative to tax cuts. A jobs agenda that will respond to the continuing high unemployment rates suffered by workers in the construction industry, the bleeding of jobs in the manufacturing sector, and the hemorrhaging of employment in the state and local government sectors. We will fight for:

- Maintaining income support and consumer spending, including extending the current federal extended benefits program for the unemployed, which expires in December;

- Rebuilding and modernizing critical national infrastructure to promote strong economic activity, including a robustly funded, multiyear Surface Transportation Act that expands our highway and bridge system and addresses the transit jobs crisis, and by creating an infrastructure bank that funds good jobs and helps rebuild our manufacturing base through standards and tools that will enhance the domestic supply chain;

- Enforcing our trade laws, fighting against China's currency manipulation to help our manufacturing base recover, and renewing a robust, long-term Trade Adjustment Assistance Act ;

- Establishing a program of countercyclical assistance to create and stabilize jobs in state and local governments, including adequate federal aid and permanent programs of direct local job creation and federal Medicaid matching rates that reflect fluctuations in unemployment rates;

-Helping the unemployed and families threatened with the loss of their homes;

-Adopting a fair tax system, including an end to tax breaks for companies going offshore and a financial transaction tax that asks those who caused the financial crisis to help pay for its consequences;

-And for every good idea that creates jobs and helps us take on the great challenge of rebuilding the American Dream.

Most of all, this is a time when everyone who cares about our future must stand together. We must organize, and we must have vision. The labor movement calls upon all who see a future for America that is better than our past to join us. It is time not for compromise but for vision, not for downsizing our dreams, but for seizing our future.

Contact: Amaya Tune (202) 637-5018

I am providing some background on what used to be the AFL-CIO position on conversion; we need to know why this work has not continued (please share this information widely):

Breaking Ranks: On Military Spending, Unions

Hear a Different Drumme:

http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1352&context=articles&sei-redir=1#search=%22afl-cio%20conversion%20committee%20winpisinger%22

Newspaper article:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-02-20/business/9001150187_1_afl-cio-president-lane-kirkland-president-bush-vetoed-legislation-converting

Winpisinger Speaks Out

An Interview with the President of the

International Association of Machinists

and Aerospace Workers

"Any conservative who thinks that this country is going to continue on the armament binge we've been on now for several years, better have another thought. The country can't afford it, we're bankrupting ourselves in every other area of our activity by these insane deficits that are generated by that kind of obscene military spending."

http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1989/03/interview-winpisinger.html

AFL-CIO industrial unions

call for rebuilding America

"They are restructuring our

jobs, our workplaces and our

lives. We want to construct the

framework on which to build

a political economy founded

on the values of peace and

prosperity, not war and poverty."
William Winpinsinger

See page #3:

http://www.library.gsu.edu/dlib/iam/getBrandedPDF.asp?issue_id=1951&year=1983

These should be companion volumes for this discussion:

Let's all be asking this important question:

How is Barack Obama's Wall Street war economy working for you?

Elmer Benson; socialist Governor of Minnesota elected on the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party ticket. The working class can break free from the "two-party trap."

If this is a "victory" what would a defeat look like?

2011-08-11T06:25:00.000-07:00

So, if this is a victory I wonder what a defeat would look like?

Honeywell Lockout Ends in Victory for Union

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/11823/honeywell_lockout_ends_in_victory_for_union/

At some point rank-and-file workers are going to have to consider different strategies and tactics in dealing with lockouts because it is obvious these labor “leaders” like Leo Gerard and this entire bunch of labor fakers and sell-outs are going to paint anything as a “victory.”

Have Leo Gerard and Richard Trumka ever heard of strikes and plant occupations? Have they ever heard of preventing scabs from entering the workplace?

These labor fakers have tried to replace struggle with relying on a bunch of worthless Democrats they back who won’t even pass anti-scab legislation.

Do we know how many lockouts are going on in this country?

Why would any union leader not place before the rank-and-file the option of going on strike and taking over a plant knowing the employer is going to lock workers out?

Is this the kind of “victory” the United Steel Workers union can take to unorganized workers and say: This is what a union can do for you?

In the end, though, when all is said and done, the message all workers reading this should get is: If you are going to become a union activist only AFTER being locked out this is the kind of victory you can expect.

Right now in the Red River Valley one of the largest employer lockouts is taking place. 1,300 workers have been locked out of their plants by American Crystal Sugar after management reached agreement with union leaders to have workers train the scabs in preparation for the lockout which management announced in advance. These union leaders, after agreeing to train the scabs convinced workers that Democratic politicians like Barack Obama, Minnesota’s liberal governor Mark Dayton, U.S. Congressman Collin Peterson and Minnesota’s Secretary of State Mark Ritchie would “take care of us.” Well, it seems that all of these politicians have misplaced their “marching shoes” as the unions supporting them are now under attack.

Question: Should workers be considering plant occupations when confronting lockouts?

Not only do workers need new leaders who aren’t afraid to participate in the “class struggle” when faced with lockouts; the working class needs a new working class based progressive people’s party that will stick with the unions in the streets and on the picket lines that will bring anti-scab legislation forward.

In these times when employers are taking advantage of the massive unemployment driven by austerity measures required to pay for these dirty wars to attack the living standards of the working class by driving down wages, decimating pensions and eliminating health care benefits, rendering unions complacent and docile on the road to busting unions in the process, maybe it’s time to ask the question:

How is Barack Obama’s Wall Street war economy working for you?

There seems to be a connection between union leaders who remain silent in the face of the politicians they support fighting imperialist wars and tolerating employers who back the same politicians who lock workers out.

Labor Day 2011; State of Today’s Unions

2011-08-02T06:52:00.001-07:00

Labor Day 2011; State of Today’s Unions

By Pancho Valdez

“All that serves labor serves the nation. All that harms labor is treason. If a man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor and to fleece the one is to rob the other.”- Abraham Lincoln, Former president of the United States

This past Spring the nation witnessed an attack on organized labor unlike any other in the past 30 years. Public workers in Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, Missouri, Michigan and Minnesota have been made the scapegoat of their state’s economic crisis which is as phoney as a three dollar bill given the fact that the crisis was not only caused by Wall Street, but also profited Wall Street as well. Another major factor to our nation’s economic woes that seldom is mentioned is the huge war budget wasted on the unjustified wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya.

Workers belonging to such unions as the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and the public sector division of the Communications Workers were the target of a well planned, vicious assault by the Tea Party and other Republican extremists using the falsehood of “balancing the state budgets”. As was shown in Wisconsin and elsewhere the real reason for the anti-union attacks was to weaken and/or destroy public worker unions and their right to collective bargaining. The state budget of these states not unlike the state budget of Texas could have been balanced by means of taxing the profits of large corporations and the incomes of the wealthy. Of course such a move requires that state legislators to have courage and the wisdom to do so. As has been shown, most elected officials lack these essential qualities!

In light of a concerted attempt to weaken or destroy public sector unions we must take into account the percentage of organized workers in the private sector, which is now around a dismal 7%! With such a low number of organized workers it is very clear that the working class of the U.S. is in for more hard times. When one sees the small percentage of private sector workers that are organized, one must ask; Why? There are several pertinent factors for this. 1) Many (if not most) jobs in the basic industries such as auto, steel, electrical appliances, garment, shoe and rubber have been off shored to such places as S. Korea, China, India, Pakistan, Mexico, Costa Rica, Haiti, Honduras and other Third World countries. The number one factor for this is cheap labor, weak or controlled unions even weaker than the U.S. trade unions or labor laws that are seldom enforced by right wing governments friendly to the U.S. and the corporations. 2) Another factor that comes to play a vital role in keeping the U.S. labor force non-union is the fact that under current labor laws, employers have had a free reign to harass, intimidate and fire workers who expressed interest in organizing. Along with weak enforcement of vital labor laws, other laws passed in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s forbid unions from engaging in such militant acts as sit-down strikes, secondary boycotts and other effective tactics utilized by the CIO during the 1930’s when the American labor movement had it’s greatest growth. It could be said with accuracy that U.S. labor unions grew at a faster rate when we had no federal laws to “protect” us as compared to today with laws in place!

One other major factor is the fact that today’s labor unions appear reluctant to use strikes as a means of offensive strategy. In the past decade labor strikes have averaged only 20 per year as compared to 350 per year in the 1950’s. While I have yet to see or hear any official reason from labor leaders for this decline in strikes, my guess is that the use of strikes has been put on hold due to weak enforcement of labor laws which basically give employers an open door to replace strikers with scabs ( common word describing strikebreakers). One factor that should be discussed is the mindset of “cooperation” that was prevalent in the middle 1970’s and early 1980’s. This way of thinking promoted “labor peace and harmony” as a means of settling contractual disputes. I can remember several unions that were big on this idea that included the United Steelworkers, the United Autoworkers and the Transport Workers Union, a public transit and airline industry union. This absurd policy resulted in weaker contractual gains, demoralized memberships and did not

prevent employers such as Ford, GM, United Steel, Bethlehem Steel from shutting down mills and factories in the U.S. and moving operations to the aforementioned Third World countries. At the time of this revolutionary concept labor leaders were counting on bosses not to de-certify unions, or shut down operations. It doesn't take a PhD. in Industrial Relations to see that such a lame idea puts workers at a distinct disadvantage and gives employers the signal that it’s ok to do whatever it takes to cut down labor costs! Anytime a labor organization goes into negotiations from a point of weakness, quite naturally the employer will go on the offensive and attack without mercy! In an attempt to impress upon the employers, the news media and the government that labor believed in the concept of “what’s good for GM is good for America” it weakened itself into the present day situation.

One is probably asking; why would any competent labor leader ever agree to such nonsense? The reason is quite simple. When worker’ organizations fail to see or comprehend the difference between the interests of capital and the interests of labor there will be serious errors made and grave consequences to face. This failure on the part of organized labor’s true role is the direct result of the shameful purge of communists and socialists from labor’s ranks during the McCarthy era. Without the presence of strong working class ideology organized labor opened itself up to be used and abused by the ruling class. It also gave a free ticket to social democrats to assume “leadership roles” and reward themselves to lucrative salaries for themselves, their friends and relatives. Such corruption along with mob control of many local unions of the Teamsters, International Longshoremen’s Association, some local unions of the Hotel & Restaurant Employees, the Laborers International Union and others resulted in sweetheart deals and reduced the organizations to being merely “paper tigers!” While employers prefer NO union at all, they will settle for one that is mob controlled as the workers have no democracy in these organizations. Sweetheart agreements are about as good as it’s going to get and even in local unions not corrupted by the mob, workers ownership of their unions was taken away as union leadership chose a top down approach in running their organizations. When workers have little if any control over their unions, participation is very shallow and in the event of an employer turning on its workers, the members are ill prepared for an effective and successful defense.

Today’s labor organizations have become far too dependent on utilizing attorneys,

mediators, arbitrators and administrative hearing to resolve disputes. Gone are the times when a group of workers would engage in old fashioned “get in your face” tactics. While labor and governmental bureaucrats along with attorneys are all in favor of this change of strategies, it does nothing to build a strong and militant labor movement in the U.S. Many younger workers today are reluctant to join a union not willing to fight for it’s members.

While organized labor in the U.S. has its flaws, it would be unfair to describe only those without mentioning its strengths. Within the past 30 years the AFL-CIO has begun supporting the call for progressive immigration reform. The labor federation has learned that many of the immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American nations have extensive labor and political experiences that make them good union activists here in the U.S. Undocumented factory, building service, meat processing and hospitality industry workers have all stepped up and joined organizing campaigns with some degree of success. Other areas where organized labor has shown willingness to open up and become more progressive are in the areas of women trade unionists, African American, Asian American and Latino trade unionists as well as an organization for gay and lesbian trade unionists.

Before viable solutions to this present day situation are discussed, it is important to know that not all labor organizations fall into the above mentioned categories. In San Antonio and across the nation UNITE HERE is organizing hospitality workers and has no problem using mass picketing as well as civil disobedience to protest unsafe and unfair working conditions. Unions like the independent United Electrical Workers and the west coast International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) are examples of two left led labor organizations that also use much more militant and confrontational tactics with a great deal of success. Recently the ILWU locals in Oakland and San Francisco refused to unload cargo that was from Israel in a show of solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinians in Gaza! This is reminiscent of their refusal to unload or load ships either from or headed to S. Africa during the struggle against apartheid. The UE is the union that got national attention when it took over a small factory in Chicago when workers were laid off without proper notice and denied their pay. At that time even the president expressed support for these workers who through their action received the unpaid checks and the factory was reopened with a new owner making a different product.

A more recent and surprising development is the AFL-CIO participating and helping to organize May Day events across the nation. May Day was abandoned as the official Labor Day in the height of the McCarthy era to appease right wing politicians who were hell bent in destroying anyone with Left wing tendencies.

While all is not where it could or should be within the American labor movement, it has progressed since the days of George Meany who bragged that he never walked a picket line! Meany was also against racial equality and a big proponent of the Vietnam war.

There are solutions to help improve the situation within the labor movement which would include assuring that all affiliated local unions are democratic whereby workers have the right to approve or disapprove contractual agreements. Workers should also have the right to run reform candidates without fear of beatings, killings, expulsion from their union and retaliation from their employers.

Another major reform idea would be for the labor movement to seriously begin working on organizing and building a worker based political party as a viable alternative to the Democratic or Republican parties. This party would include civil rights, civil liberty, environmental, gay and lesbian, peace activists and others who feel disenfranchised from the electoral system as both major parties are controlled by corporate bribes disguised as “campaign donations.” An important factor of this new party would be full support and adherence to our nation’s Constitution.

Another change would be for organized labor to depend less on federal agencies, attorneys, arbitrators and mediators to resolve disputes. Adoption of the proven and far more militant tactics of the CIO are in definite order. Laws and regulations designed solely to protect the interests of the bosses should be ignored and broken whenever possible. A union that is afraid to fight is a union that does not deserve to collect dues from its members!

A step in this direction will help make the U.S. trade union movement a force to be reckoned with by elected officials and employers alike. It may sound like wishful thinking, but it can be done. Doing it depends on our willingness to make it happen!

-Pancho Valdez is a member of Laborers Local 1095 and has been active in the movement for justice since 1965. He can be reached at: 210-882-2230 or mestizowarrior210@yahoo.com

What kind of "labor solidarity" rally has been planned by the AFL-CIO in the name of "Hands Across Borders?"

2011-06-27T04:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=134259779987965

A letter to a Canadian trade union friend.

There are all kinds of ironies in life.

Here is one of these ironies---

The International Labour Council will be meeting at the scab Grand Portage Lodge & Casino in Grand Portage Minnesota July 15 thru 17th holding a "Hands Across the Border" international labor solidarity rally in a non-union facility rented by a leader of the United Food and Commercial Workers union who doesn't care about the Draconian conditions casino workers are forced to work under.

I wonder if Canadian labour leaders understand that the workers at Grand Portage Lodge & Casino in Grand Portage, Minnesota are forced to work in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws without protections and rights extended to all other workers under the National Labor Relations Act as a result of "Compacts" explicitly created to deny workers their most basic human rights in the so-called Indian Gaming Industry where not one single slot machine is owned by any Native American or Tribal Council?

Does Ken Georgetti know that U.S. labor "leaders" secured this scab facility? Does Ken Lewenza know? Does Kevin Rebeck, President of the Manitoba Federation of Labour know what he is being dragged into? Does Sid Ryan understand what is taking place here?

I remember when some people invited me to speak at a meeting at the Wheels Inn in Chatham, Ontario. Upon getting to the motel I found CAW pickets. I didn't speak at the meeting and I didn't cross the picket line. Later I participated in a demonstration organized by the Ontario Federation of Labour at the Wheels Inn.

I hope you Canadian trade unionists are going to be asking questions about why U.S. labor leaders see fit to rent the scab facilities of the Grand Portage Lodge & Casino in Grand Portage, Minnesota for a "labour solidarity action."

It is disgusting and shameful, but not atypical, for U.S. union leaders to have no sense of solidarity with workers struggling to organize and this is why labor membership in the United States is at an all-time low.

The blatant racism in using this scab facility knowing the conditions workers are forced to endure is most shameful and disgusting.

The International Labour Council President, Jim Gleb from United Food and Commercial Workers, rented these scab facilities. His number is 218-728-5174. How does Jim Gleb explain inviting Canadian trade unionists to such a scab facility under the theme "Hands Across the Border." Would Jim Gleb rent facilities from any of the scab hotels/motels on Canal Park in Duluth?

One can't help but ask why Minnesota AFL-CIO President Shar Knutson did not inform Jim Gleb of the consequences of such action.

And what about Richard Trumka, the big-mouth who heads up the AFL-CIO?

And what about Leo Gerard, the USW President with the potty mouth?

All these U.S. labor leaders who talk about "solidarity" are now using the dues of their members to rent the scab facilities of the Grand Portage Lodge & Casino and dragging Canadian trade unionists into a dirty, racist, anti-labor activity in the name of cross border labor solidarity. Why hasn't Jim Gleb apprised Canadian trade unionists of the most Draconian conditions the workers at the Grand Portage Lodge & Casino are forced to work under and endure without any voice or rights at work?

Did Jim Gleb tell Canadian trade unionists of the dirty relationship between the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party and the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association?

I would suggest that this "Hands Across the Border" solidarity action be moved to a public facility where workers are union members working under a union contract--- like a Minnesota State Park; but, then again, AFSCME members might not have a contract, right?

I wonder if the banners for this "solidarity rally" will be printed by the same outfit who printed James Oberstar's yard signs and other campaign material--- by John McCarthy's "Tony Doom Enterprises?" John McCarthy is the racist rich white man who heads up the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association. John McCarthy hands out campaign contributions on behalf of the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association and then with his other hand takes this money back through his business, "Tony Doom Enterprises."

It's no wonder the United Food and Commercial Workers haven't been able to organize Wal-marts with staff people like Jim Gleb.

In a phone conversation I had this morning (6/24/2011) with Jim Gleb he told me he is not aware of the Draconian working conditions imposed on casino workers through these "Compacts" created by the Democrats in return for hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions. Like we say here in Minnesota, "Ya, sure; you betcha."

Yours in struggle and solidarity,

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

Greetings from Walkerville

2011-06-09T18:57:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Walkerville

Phil Neuenfeldt, Wisconsin State AFL-CIOpresident, < http://www.wisaflcio.org/ > sends an update on the actions around Wisconsin’s Walkerville.

Day six of the Walkerville tent city protest has seen overwhelming support from Wisconsin workers, students and community members. Over the course of the week, thousands of Wisconsinites have gathered on the cement blocks lining the Capitol Square in order to call attention to Gov. Walker and his legislative allies’ destructive budget proposals—proposals which will cripple Wisconsin’s schools, health care system and communities.

Many have said that they are surrounding the Capitol to bear witness to their elected officials’ decisions and to let their Representatives know that the people of Wisconsin are preparing to take back their government back this summer.

“Walkerville is a way to focus the spotlight on Gov. Walker and Sen. Alberta Darling’s budget that will devastate higher education, public education and Wisconsin as we know it,” explained Michael Rosen, President of AFT Local 212, and professor at the Milwaukee Area Technical College. Rosen traveled to Walkerville on Wednesday to spend the night.

About 150 tents have sprung up around the Capitol since Saturday June 4, when the Walkerville tent city was erected.

Stephanie Bloomingdale, Secretary-Treasurer of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO, brought her son, Nicholas to Walkerville. “We are here to tell Scott Walker that his attack on Wisconsin’s unions, middle class, and communities will not stand.

The people are coming together here in Walkerville to fight for a just budget and for an economy that works for all.”

Each day in Walkerville has had a theme, complete with educational programs to inform citizens on the budget and how it will impact their everyday life. Public services, health care, education and higher education have all been a theme of the day. Many local musicians have taken to the stage on State Street to show their support for the protestors and entertain the family-friendly crowd.

“As Wisconsinites, we cannot standby in silence while our friends, family and neighbors suffer at the hand of Governor Walker’s bad choices for our state,” explained Dian Palmer, President of SEIU Health Care Wisconsin and a public health nurse from Milwaukee who has been spending multiple nights in Walkerville. “I am here because what I have heard from Governor Walker does not represent the Wisconsin that I believe in or that my fellow Wisconsinites believe in. And I am here to bear witness and ensure that our leaders do right by education, healthcare and programs for senior citizens.”

Walkerville Events

On Health Care Day, nurses and home care patients took on a mock Scott Walker in the fight for quality health care in a play boxing match. Candice Owley, President of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, took to the ring in order to ensure quality care for all of Wisconsin.

On Public Services day, state and county employees held a mock town-hall listening session
< http://wisaflcio.typepad.com/wisconsin-state-afl-cio-blog/2011/06/walkerville-mock-listening-session-.htmlwith > characters of Gov. Walker, David Koch, Sen. Glen Grothman and Sarah Palin. On Sunday, Wisconsin teachers held a citizen speak-out:
< http://wisaflcio.typepad.com/wisconsin-state-afl-cio-blog/2011/06/teachers-rally-walkerville.html >

Last Monday, fire fighters, farmers and cops lead a march of thousands to call for a fair and just budget. Read more about it here:
< http://wisaflcio.typepad.com/wisconsin-state-afl-cio-blog/2011/06/fair-budget-march-walkerville.html >

As the winds blew in last night Walkerville residence took refuge by patronizing local businesses as they waited out the storm. After the storm, Walkerville citizens returned to their tents, tucked-in for the night and continued to raise awareness of Gov. Walker’s bad budget choices.

More information on Walkerville

For pictures of Walkerville click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wisaflcio/

For Walkerville stories click here: http://wisaflcio.typepad.com/

To donate to help the Walkerville, tent city run click here:
http://wi.aflcio.org/statefed/index.cfm?action=article&articleID=8853d778-e839-4967-982e-c4ca49b2d26c

For live updates from Walkerville visit the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wisaflcio

Twitterpages: http://twitter.com/#!/wisaflcio

Press Clips From Walkerville

Wisconsin Protesters Erect ‘Walkerville’ Tent City To Protest Scott Walker’s Budget Cuts, Hufftington Post.

In Wisconsin, Legislative Urgency as Recall Threat Looms, New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/us/politics/08wisconsin.html?_r=3

Friendly Spirit Prevails in Walkerville, Wisconsin State Journal:
http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_75c648fa-8f6e-11e0-a928-001cc4c03286.html

CNN in Walkerville:
http://www.criticalmention.com/ctv3-1/landing_email.php?type=email&video=true&random_string=67b2d92dedfb1f74df9b4c7a1e8950f9

Check out my blog: http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

I wrote this when I was thinking of running for governor; then I supported Mark Dayton--- big mistake

2011-06-06T12:33:00.000-07:00

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2008

Make way for the working class to have a say…

This enormous economic mess we are now experiencing, along with the heavy debt the bankers and the politicians of both major political parties have saddled us with, can be summed up very simply: The capitalists have taken all the profits and left the working class with all the problems.

There are only two sources of wealth: Labor and Mother Nature.

Anyone with an ounce of common sense understands that if you allow labor to be continually exploited and Mother Nature to be repeatedly abused and raped there will be severe consequences.

We are now reaping the consequences for allowing this parasitical monster of state-monopoly capitalism to have spun its web of corruption in the form of a cannibalistic military-financial-industrial complex which now threatens to consume and destroy our families, our communities, our State and our Nation while wreaking havoc in other lands.

Enough!

The time has come to put the needs of people before corporate profits.

There is only one alternative; for working people to come together to build a new society on the foundation created by the socialists of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party.

We need to fight and struggle to re-establish the liberal, democratic and progressive socialist traditions for which Minnesota is known around the world.

We have complex problems before us… but, any country which can spend trillions of dollars on wars to steal the oil of other nations, and trillions of dollars bailing out corporations and bankers looking for using socialism to solve the problems of their own creation as they have sought to prop up their rotten capitalist system--- which they have touted to the world as being the best--- at our expense… This Nation can now come up with the resources to use socialism to solve the problems for the rest of us, too.

What is good for the goose is, in this case, is even better for the gander.

Let Barack Obama and John McCain volunteer to go off exploring the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for Osama Bin Laden; we have better things to do.

Our first priority is to end these dirty wars for oil and redeploy those funds--- as we bring home the troops--- to creating a world class socialized health care system which will create millions of new jobs; five messes the money-grubbing Wall Street coupon clippers and their bought and paid for politicians created, all solved at the same time by ending these dirty imperialist wars for oil and regional domination--- we get health care not warfare, and we begin to solve the problem of unemployment--- and when we put people to work in this way we begin to create a new--- functioning--- people oriented, cooperative, socialist economy where democracy will flourish because it will require the full participation and involvement of all people working together in order to succeed.

Second, without further delay, we need to establish the State Bank of Minnesota to accomplish for our State what the State Bank of North Dakota was set up, by workers and farmers, to do--- fund enterprises to keep people working.

Third, we need a minimum wage which is a real living wage arrived at by the calculations of the United States Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics in cooperation with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development--- based upon the real figures relating to the real cost of living and this minimum wage should be required by legislation to be updated quarterly right along with the release of all economic indicators to assure a quality life and decent standard of living for all working people and their families.

We have finally come to the point where even the parasitic bankers and the exploiting industrialists now concede that only socialism can bail them out of this horrible mess and solve their problems... capitalism has reached the end of the line and the only thing now to be had from the system is unending human misery.

At the point where society has to pay to clean up the corrupt mess these parasitic predatory lenders and financial institutions have created, this is the time to say:

Enough!

What tax-payers finance, tax-payers must own.

If Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs do not like these terms, these greedy pigs should make the trip to their off-shore banks in the Cayman Islands and make withdrawals from their accounts to pay to solve their own problems.

The time has come to roll up our sleeves, come together, and get to work quickly before this entire rotten system collapses---like the I35-W Bridge--- and crushes us all while leaving our children and grandchildren with the clean-up and the bills.

I firmly believe working people can run our country and our state better than any of the big-business politicians being funded by the corporate lobbyists.

Effectively using the tools of public ownership and nationalization combined with modern, scientific planning for the common good, we can put people to work in decent jobs at real living wages... we hear it all the time just before Election Day: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs... but we never see the jobs, and if we do, these jobs are poverty wage jobs no one can live on.

I intend to run for Governor of Minnesota in 2010.

I invite all working people who think that it is possible to create something better than the mess we are now in, to come together and work from where socialist Governors Floyd B. Olson and Elmer A. Benson left off in trying to create a just and decent society where people live and work in harmony with Mother Nature, to join with me, in establishing the Minnesota Party to give the bankers, the mining, forestry and power generating industries along with the industrialists and big-agribusiness a real run for their money.

Let’s run these parasites that have been living off of our labor and destroying Mother Nature right out of our state. We can get along just fine--- even better--- without them.

Alan L. Maki

Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

and

Candidate for Governor of Minnesota

Former member: Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party State Central Committee

Enough!

2011-05-26T09:52:00.001-07:00

Enough!

Governor Dayton,

First of all I want to say that I agree with the above comment about saving the wild rice because by saving the wild rice from destruction we are protecting human health and saving ourselves, too. Plus, you and the DFL talk a lot about "jobs, jobs, jobs" and "business, business, business;" yet, in the wild rice there are many jobs being created through environmentally friendly real "green" businesses. I think it is deplorable you have not publicly scolded DFL State Senator Tom Bakk for tacking on this racist, anti-jobs, anti-small business environmentally irresponsible rider to this legislation that is part and parcel of a long-standing campaign of genocide against First Nations Peoples. You call yourself a liberal, Governor Dayton. Do what a good liberal would do and show some leadership in standing up to racism, for jobs and for a "green" economy.

Now---

Run this by the tax-cutting, anti-tax, "fiscally responsible" Republicans, the DFL business caucus and the DFL Summit Hill Club:

When people are unemployed they shouldn't have to pay any taxes--- income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes. A government that can't organize a full-employment economy while there is so much needed to be done doesn't deserve the support of unemployed workers.

Tell the Republicans to forgo their legislative salaries and become "volunteers."

Get on the phone to Obama and tell him to end these dirty wars and send the money to Minnesota.

Tax the casinos to resolve the state's debt.

Come on, man, stand up for your liberal ideals. Get a back-bone.

These budget battles are a reflection of our true priorities.

End the wars; don't just tax-the-rich--- tax-the-hell out of the rich.

Stop playing games with these Republicans and business Democrats from the DFL Business Caucus and the Summit Hill Club.

Gather together a "People's Lobby" in support of a "People's Budget."

Get the Minnesota AFL-CIO to get people on buses from every county... bring in liberal, progressive and left-minded Minnesotans to deck these Republicans and the wealthy elite of the Democratic Party.

Stand up and fight for your liberal beliefs; no compromises with these greedy pigs who want to feed at the public trough and then cry about "fiscal responsibility."

There is only one way Minnesotans are going to get jobs and that is when you turn the State of Minnesota into the employer of first choice putting the unemployed to work solving the pressing problems of the people.

You also might consider joining with those of us looking for a working class based peoples party as an alternative to the thoroughly rotten and corrupt Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party.

By the way; why was Ken Martin, the head of the Minnesota DFL, in Iowa campaigning against Tim Pawlenty when he should have been right here in Minnesota standing at your side mobilizing to defeat the filthy rich?

You are now traveling across Minnesota talking with Minnesotans. Great! This is what Jeffersonian democracy is supposed to be all about.

Let me suggest that you ask each and every Minnesotan a very basic and fundamental question which you can convey their answers to your buddy, Barack Obama:

How is Barack Obama's Wall Street war economy working for you?

If you get as far north as Warroad, stop on in; the coffee is always on and there are some chocolate chip cookies my grand-kids made to munch on.

Maybe over coffee and cookies we can discuss why you have reneged on our agreement; we supported you, and you haven't fulfilled your end of the deal--- we need to know why; it's all about accountability. Between a "red" Finn and a good liberal I'm sure you understand what I am getting at.

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

Minnesota Public Radio... all the democracy corporate money can buy...

2011-04-12T14:32:00.001-07:00

I Am Attacked on Minnesota Public Radio by Kerri Miller and John McCarthy without the right of response
I called into a morning program on Minnesota Public Radio that featured as one of its guests John McCarthy, the rich white man who heads up the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association.

After making two points I was cut-off while making the third point at which time the host of the program opened the microphone up to John McCarthy to attack me until he was done with his lies.

If Minnesota Public Radio was the least bit interested in democracy and fairness I would have been provided the opportunity to respond to McCarthy and the viciously anti-labor and racist remark made by the program host that, "no one is forced to work in the casinos."

In fact, two circumstances by themselves and combined do force people to work in these loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages and without a voice at work and without any rights under state or federal labor laws.

Circumstance #1:

The faltering economy. Tens of thousands of people are out of work. Economic necessity forces people to work in these casinos. Offer casino workers a job elsewhere at real living wages with good working conditions and their rights protected by state and federal labor laws and these casinos will be left without anyone to staff them.

Circumstance #2:

Racism. Racist hiring practices make it practically impossible for most Native American Indians to get jobs outside of the casino industry. The statistics and facts bear this out. In all the counties and their townships and cities in, near and around where the Indian Reservations of White Earth, Red Lake and Leech Lake are located, there are fewer than 20 Native American Indians employed in these public sectors out of thousands of workers. Because Affirmative Action is not being enforced in accordance with state and federal law, and the townships, cities and counties aren't even required to have Affirmative Action policies and programs in place, these racists don't have any Affirmative Action programs in any of these townships, cities or counties. Racism forces Native Americans to seek employment in these unhealthy smoke-filled casinos where they have no rights, receive poverty wages with no or little benefits and no voice in the workplace.

In fact, when it comes to Native American Indians they are forced to work in these casinos because Circumstance #1--- unemployment and Circumstance #2--- racism are both dominant and determining factors since unemployment rates on these three Indian Reservations range from a low of 60% to a high of 85%.

How can anyone be so arrogant and callous to argue with complete disregard for economic and racist factors that "no one is forced to work in these casinos?" Yet, this is just what Minnesota Public Radio's Mid-Morning host, Kerri Miller, argued. And then she proceeded to arrogantly and undemocratically not allow me to respond while turning the microphone over to John McCarthy to viciously attack me; again, without allowing me to respond.

Now, the facts are such that Minnesota Public Radio has intentionally ignored the plight of casino workers because the casino managements are now underwriting MPR programming to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

And, where do these underwriting funds originate from? Indian Gaming revenues. Racist Indian Gaming which is controlled by a bunch of racist white mobsters who own the slot machines and table games and those like John McCarthy who dole out campaign contributions to the politicians who in return assure them of cheap labor.

John McCarthy and Kerri Miller refused to address the issues I raised:

1. Why don't these casino operations pay taxes as it just happens that if they were taxed like any other business Minnesota would not have any budget problems plus the Indian Nations would receive more than they are presently receiving from gaming revenues?

2. Why didn't John McCarthy or Kerri Miller respond to the fact that 41,000 casino workers are forced to work in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws and without any voice at work. Why no explanation as to why this situation exists in the first place?

3. Why didn't John McCarthy or Kerri Miller address the fact that the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association spends tens of millions of dollars contributing to the campaigns of everyone except Native American Indians and there isn't one single Native American Indian sitting amongst Minnesota's more than two-hundred state legislators?

Of course, Kerri Miller, the host of Minnesota Public Radio's Mid-Morning Program did not ask John McCarthy about the ethics of him owning Tony Doom Enterprises, a big-business making millions in profits as a result of selling campaign advertising materials to the very politicians he funnels the campaign contributions to through the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association. If this isn't a racket I don't know what is.

I leave it to people to draw their own conclusion as to whether I should have been allowed to respond to the anti-labor and racist response of Kerri Miller and the following vicious attack on me personally by John McCarthy who is such a coward he doesn't dare debate me on these issues but then goes on to attack me for "posting malicious, vicious and nasty things on my blog here" without substantiating one single one of his accusations.

Furthermore, John McCarthy told Kerri Miller that he "knows" me; another outright lie.

People should take a drive by John McCarthy's home and ask why he is living high on the hog as a direct result of his racist role in the impoverishment and ill-health of the Indian people. John McCarthy lives just outside of Bemidji, Minnesota in a two-million dollar estate at 8925Cove Drive NE, Bemidji, Minnesota. Take a drive out to see John McCarthy's estate and then drive through the Leech Lake, Red Lake and White Earth Indian Reservations to see how casino workers getting paid poverty wages have to live or check out the dirty, filthy, rat infested apartment complex in Warroad, Minnesota that Floyd Jourdain and the Red Lake Tribal Council reserve for the members of the Red Lake Nation who work in the Seven Clans Casino Red Lake who have to pay over half of their poverty wages to live there.

Why doesn't Minnesota Public Radio report on any of this? The reason is obvious; John McCarthy and the casino managements and the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association are bribing MPR into silence just like the politicians have been bribed to enable this horrendous and most disgraceful situation to come into existence and continue where poverty is the only thing that flourishes so a few mobsters owning the slot machines and table games can profit.

For those who don't care about the plight of casino workers and enjoy gambling and the cheap meals served, keep this in mind:

* The Minnesota Department of Public Safety who is supposed to be monitoring slot machine compliance checks fewer than 150 slot machines a year in all of Minnesota.

* Food served in the casinos is not inspected by federal or state inspectors nor is the condition of the places where the food is prepared.

* And for those staying in the casino hotels/motels there has been no building inspections by local or state building inspectors.

As for John McCarthy's claim made on Mid-Morning that all the casinos have been built and constructed by union workers this is an outright big fat lie. I challenge John McCarthy to produce the union contracts. In fact, union business agents and stewards are not even allowed on these construction sites.

And casino workers, like the 5,000 employed by Stanley Crooks at his Mystic Lake Casino empire are forced to sign statements stating that they agree, as terms of their employment, that they will not engage in union organizing knowing they will be fired.

In fact, Stanley Crooks has fired over 200 casino workers from his Mystic Lake Casino empire in the last three years simply for "blogging about working conditions." And not a peep of any of this from Minnesota Public Radio. How come Kerri Miller is allowed to voice her anti-labor and racist views from a radio network funded by tax-payers in addition to casino managements without any restrictions or retribution?

One would think that an industry created by politicians at tax-payer expense while generating tens of billions of dollars annually in profits would require a bit of scrutiny from Minnesota Public Radio but all this industry gets from MPR, its management, program hosts and reporters is unconditional praise.

Kerri Miller doesn't even ask one of Minnesota's leading politicians or John McCarthy who speaks for this dirty, corrupt and disgusting casino industry why it is that these casinos have been allowed to circumvent the ban on smoking applicable to all other places of employment in Minnesota.

How much is it costing Minnesota tax-payers to have 41,000 Minnesotans working in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos where casino workers are fired without compensation of any kind if they develop coughs and begin to lose their hearing?

Perhaps Kerri Miller should invite someone from the Indian Health Service, the Minnesota Heart and Lung Foundation or the American Cancer Society to explain the impact of second-hand smoke on casino workers' health and lives and the impact to their families.

John McCarthy is concerned about all the "nasty things" I have to say about him, the casino managements and the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association along with the politicians he bribes and then profits from, again, here on my blog... well, let's talk about the real nasty things John McCarthy brings to Minnesota--- smoke-filled workplaces, poverty and racism.

And if these nasty things and the nasty people like John McCarthy don't get talked talked about here on my popular blog, where do they get talked about? On Minnesota Public Radio? Ha!

Harry Bridges again at the center of controversy

2010-03-26T12:57:00.000-07:00

From: Alan L. Maki [mailto:amaki000@centurytel.net]
Sent: Friday, March 26, 2010 2:17 PM
To: 'SALYND@aol.com'; Michael Munk (lastmarx@comcast.net)
Subject: RE: Harry Bridges 20 years later

Mr. Staughton Lynd,

You engage in the same kind of anti-communism that Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn engage in--- you fail to educate about the real role of the Communist Party even though you are well aware of its role. While this kind of anti-communism may seem different than its more pernicious counterpart; for the working class it is just as deadly.

It is nice you write about Communists; but, the real story is about how those Communists worked through their Communist Clubs which makes the activities of these Clubs the central question needing to be articulated when it comes to what kind of grassroots and rank-and-file organizations are needed to create real change.

If one reads the books, “The Many and the Few” by Henry Kraus, “Organize” by Wyndham Mortimer, etc. the role of the Communist Party Clubs is demonstrated. Phil Raymond, who
you are aware of who built the very foundation of the UAW along with Nadia Barkan (the Communist whose name has been virtually wiped from history--- as has Phil Raymond’ for that matter) told me that he a Nadia traveled all over Michigan organizing all the Communist Party Clubs they could as a prelude to initiating the unionization drives in auto. The book, “Brother Bill McKie” also teaches about the role of Communist Party Clubs. The book that was the most widely read book of the 1930’s was, “The People’s Front” by Earl Browder which historians and writers like you, Chomsky and Zinn don’t even seem to want to acknowledge although the Communist Party itself is largely to blame for this lack of recognition of this book which would be so vital for people to read today in order to avoid many of the pitfalls you provide for people to fall into as you provided only part of the story as you seek to “explain” this dispute with Harry Bridges.

And, how is it that the work and writings of someone of such an important stature and standing in the left and progressive movements like Frank Marshall Davis has been ignored? And almost everything written about Paul Robeson these days is intentionally tinged with anti-communism yet, perhaps, Robeson’s greatest accomplishments were the hand he lent to building Communist Party Clubs all over this country.

These Communist Party Clubs have been central to all the work in labor and civil rights struggles in this country from 1919 on-ward.

It is not enough to tell the stories of these Communists without telling how they worked through their Communist Party Clubs--- even the Communist Party has largely not told this story but this does not excuse others like yourself from not telling this most important story.

I don’t say any of this to in any way demean the good work you have done; but, since you feel your point needs to be raised about Harry Bridges, I think the role of CPUSA Clubs needs to be broached, too--- since it is rather common knowledge, in spite of his denial for legal reasons, Harry Bridges was a member of the CPUSA, held a Party card and worked in a Party club… so, any problems you have with Harry Bridges is in fact a criticism of the CPUSA and his association/membership in it. Now, here you come, you want one side of a complex issue told… an issue that a book should be written about that gives well-rounded views from all sides. You want us to believe Stan Weir was merely a voice for the rank-and-file against union bureaucracy when this is far from the truth--- Weir was an opponent of “the people’s front” which gave Harry Bridges and others good reason not to work with him as he worked with Norman Thomas--- and this needs to be very clear… not only was Norman Thomas and his Socialist Party invited to participate in “the people’s front;” but, he was offered a shared leadership role in it--- as equals. Weir and Thomas CHOSE to work with the America Firsters which was nothing but a bunch of Hitler-loving fascists.

As for Finland… Hitler intended to use Finland in his plans to destroy the Soviet Union--- I’m glad Stalin was smart enough to understand what you and Zinn don’t/didn’t. Harry Bridges understood what Stalin understood, too.

There are any number of stories you could tell which would demonstrate the important role played by Communist Clubs which created the leaders of labor with untold stories--- from auto to steel to transportation to the docks to the raids against UE in communities like Benton Harbor/St. Joseph, Michigan to the foundries of Muskegon, Michigan to the hard-rock miners of Mine-Mill.

Let’s tell the real story of Stan Weir which is the story of his opposition to Communist Party Clubs and the working-class heroes like Harry Bridges who were able to lead these Clubs in a way that built strong rank-and-file led unions while defending his right to remain in the United States--- there might not have been any other worker in this country who has ever been singled out for a campaign of hate intended to silence him than Harry Bridges.

I’m glad to see you at least took a little poke at that worthless Trotskyite little pip squeak Emil Mazey… Stan Weir deserves the same.

Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell Phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Please check out my blog: http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

From: SALYND@aol.com [mailto:SALYND@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, March 26, 2010 1:52 AM
To: amaki000@centurytel.net; lastmarx@comcast.net
Subject: Re: Harry Bridges 20 years later

Dear Alan, Michael and all,
In the book Rank and File, my wife and I included interviews with three rank-and-file women -- Katherine Hyndman, Vicki Starr, and Sylvia Woods -- all of whom had been members of the Communst Party. At my suggestion, these three were then made the subject of the documentary "Union Maids." They have now all passed on, Vicki only a few months ago.
Howard Zinn, who also passed on recently, had been perhaps my closest friend for almost fifty years since we were together at Spelman College in the early Sixties. Howard grew up in Brooklyn. He was a teenager in the late 1930s. He came out of precisely the political culture of "a popular Front led by the Communist Party." But as he describes in his autobiography You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train, step by step he developed an independent position. He opposed the Soviet invasion of Finland before World War II. He came to repudiate his own role as a bombardier in the Allied saturation bombing that was rationalized by uncritical support for World War II because it was viewed as defense of the Soviet Union.
So I don't think it works to attack me as a Trotskyist. I didn't criticize Bridges because of an alleged relationship to the Communist Party but on the merits. And as long as I can remember -- going back at least to 1950 -- I have criticized the Trotsky who told the Kronstadt rebels, "I will shoot you down like pheasants."

Staughton Lynd

----- Original Message -----
From: SALYND@aol.com
To: lastmarx@comcast.net
Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2010 2:55 PM
Subject: Re: Harry Bridges 20 years later

Dear lastmarx/Michael Munk,
I dissent from an unequivocally positive assessment of Harry Bridges.
1. Are you familiar with the protest of a number of African American longshoremen and Stan Weir to their exclusion from the union as so-called B men?
2. I was myself present at a national conference of "Labor For Peace" at the local union hall of Harold Gibbons' Teamsters local in St. Louis, in about 1970. A rank-and-file caucus presented a motion that there be a national day of protest against the war in Vietnam, each group of workers doing what made their sense in their locality: staying home from work, an extended lunch hour, a leaflet distribution, wearing anti-war buttons, whatever. I had the honor of seconding the motion. The conference sessions were chaired by a succession of national union bureaucrats. The gentleman in the chair when we made our motion (Emil Mazey) sneeringly said, "Let's take a vote on this ridiculous motion!" The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the motion. Over the lunch hour the various honchos present got together with Bridges and persuaded him to make a motion after lunch to rescind the motion approved that morning. Sadly, intimidated by Bridges' radical reputation, the delegates complied.
Let's put aside the habit of looking for some national union leader (John L. Lewis, Philip Murray, Walter Reuther, Harry Bridges, Arnold Miller, Eddie Sadlowski, Ron Carey, John Sweeney, Andrew Stern, Richard Trumka) to lead us out of the wilderness. Gene Debs knew what to say about that unfortunate strategy: If I could lead you into the Promised Land, someone else could lead you out
May I ask that you circulate this response to your list?

Staughton Lynd
Dear Staughton,

Thanks for your comments. On the issue of exclusion of Blacks: that's what my paper is about. As I wrote:

I'm working on a paper about an exception to the ILWU's record on "equal
opportunity" the lilly white (until 1964) longshore local 8 in Portland. It
will be the subject of a panel at the Pacific NW Labor History Assn
conference in Portland June 11-13. Details available...Mike

But Harry himself busted his ass against racists who used the ILWU's local autonomy constitution to keep out blacks.His International was arguably the most militantly anti racist union.

On the Vietnam war: The unions ILWU's own history celebrates its opposition:: "In the early 1960s the ILWU was the first union to stand up in opposition to US military intervention in Vietnam in 1964. Over the next decade, the union joined with a host of regional and national anti-war coalitions and demonstrations--and, led by Lou Goldblatt, helped organize Labor for Peace. The union's policy called for an end to bombing of civilian populations, the withdrawal of US military forces and a negotiated settlement of the civil war." The ILWU Story (1977) . So what was that St Louis episode about?

Although not "unequivocally positive" [some aspects of the M&M agreement, etc], I'd still consider Harry one of our most effective and principled union champions of the working class.

Per your request, circulating our exchange to my Labor list, which got the original post.

Cheers, Mike

visit my website www.michaelmunk.com

United Autoworkers and Foxwoods reach "agreement"

2010-02-04T07:36:00.003-08:00

UAW sells out casino workers--- goes from "two-tier" wage structure to "three-tier" with a sub-minimum wage base pay and the opportunity to continue breathing second-hand smoke

Say, did anyone notice the new "contract" the United Autoworkers union (UAW) just signed with the huge Foxwoods Casino/Resort (an outfit run by a feudal tribal government for the profits of some mobsters)... a corrupt government put in place just like the puppet government in Haiti?

It's a union--- and a union contract--- management is thrilled about because the contract helps management "manage" the workers--- the dealers.

The agreement includes a sub-minimum wage for base pay.

The UAW has been busy "organizing" in Michigan, too, at two casinos we have been trying to organize--- Odawa and Island... their idea of "organizing" is to offer management "a better deal" than you can get "from a bunch of communists."

The "contract" includes a clause prohibiting workers from striking to "keep the contract in line with tribal traditions and laws."

No mention of the fact the feudal tribal government is the creation of the crooked and corrupt Indian Gaming Association.

Under the terms of this "contract" two-thirds of the workers covered by the contract will make less than $12,000.00 a year because the UAW did themselves one better and went from their "two-tier" auto contracts to a "three-tier" contract for casino workers.

Foxwoods is one of the most profitable capitalist enterprises in the world and this is the best the UAW can do for workers... but, its like Ron Gettelfinger has said, "We are going to have to pick up the dues we are losing in auto from some place else."

Workers at the Odawa Casino/Resort in Petoskey, Michigan told the UAW to get lost... at the Island Casino in Escanaba, Michigan workers weren't quite as polite.

The UAW has refused to join us in challenging the "Compacts" creating the Indian Gaming Industry for fear it might offend their "coalition partners," the Democratic Party which gets tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the Indian Gaming Associations and the UAW doesn't want to insult corrupt tribal governments which work together with the Indian Gaming Associations to assure a pool of cheap labor through the perpetual breeding of racist unemployment and poverty so there will be enough workers to employ in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws.

Rumor has it the lead UAW negotiator from the Foxwoods' "gentlemen's agreement" has been offered a job with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The UAW thinks its alright for workers to breath in second-hand smoke as long as it "doesn't bother them;" of course, the American Cancer Society and the Heart & Lung Foundation might take a different view of this as does the Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council--- no smoking in the workplace, period.

In Minnesota, with the help of State Senator Tom Bakk, now a candidate for Governor supported heavily by the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association; the UAW, USW and the building trades unions have joined with Bakk in looking after the rights of non-union employees in the hospitality industry by helping them save their jobs by freeing these workers from having the minimum wage enforced in the hospitality industry.

The UAW-Foxwoods agreement is the worst union contract in U.S. history; the washer-women in the Jamestown Settlement were able to negotiate a better union contract.

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:

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

A response to Richard Trumka

2010-01-30T11:18:00.001-08:00

Trumka: Obama Absolutely Right to Make Jobs Top Priority

By Mike Hall

January 29, 2010 - 8:31am ET

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Obama’s call this week to make jobs his No. 1 priority in his State of the Union message is the right message, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. As Obama said in his speech:

Jobs must be our number one focus in 2010, and that is why I am calling for a new jobs bill tonight.

Obama called for small business tax breaks to encourage hiring and infrastructure spending. He urged passage of tax incentives for larger business to keep and create jobs in the United States, and an end to tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. He also proposed taking $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat—a proposal similar to one in our AFL-CIO jobs initiative.
As Trumka said:

We must act on a scale that will be meaningful: We need more than 10 million jobs just to get out of the hole we’re in. We want health care fixed. We want our leaders to break the stranglehold of Wall Street and the big banks and make them pay to repair the economic damage they created.

Obama praised the House for passing a jobs bill last month and urged the Senate to do the same. And as lawmakers on Capitol Hill have slowed reform of health care, Obama urged Congress not to walk away from reform.
He also rightly pointed to how the steps his administration has taken have alleviated the economic suffering of working people. Steps that included the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which has ensured that 2 million Americans are working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. The act is on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year. All this was done while cutting taxes for working Americans, Obama said.

We cut taxes for 95% of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses. We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college.

Saying that America’s workers are frustrated and angry, Trumka said, “the President was right to call out Republicans for obstructing change and putting politics ahead of progress.”

Now it’s time for all of us to get busy and work together to bring the big changes that are essential—starting with enacting a jobs bill that is big enough to create jobs for the millions of people who want to work and can’t find jobs. The time for small change is long gone. We were pleased to see that the President embraced two of the job creation proposals we have made—investing in infrastructure and helping small businesses get credit through TARP funds.

The AFL-CIO’s five-point plan to create jobs immediately would begin to put people back to work and ease the economic hardships on Main Street’s working families who, unlike Wall Street bankers and brokers, have borne the brunt of the economy’s meltdown. The plan, which Trumka says will soon be expanded, includes:

Extending unemployment insurance for the long-term jobless (due to run out next month) along with expanding food stamp assistance, and health care benefits (COBRA) for unemployed workers and their families through COBRA.
Rebuilding the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.
Increasing aid to state and local governments to maintain vital services and jobs.
Funding jobs in neglected communities.
Using left over bank bailout funds to get credit moving to small Main Street businesses.

Trumka also says the AFL-CIO is gearing up for a nationwide jobs campaign with allies and communities. While we “will not agree with every aspect of every proposal,” he says, we will

continue to be an independent voice for middle class Americans and fight for the change working families need—and we are ready to do more. This is the time for a broad movement of Americans demanding jobs and an economy that works for all, and we’re ready to put our energy and leadership into building that movement—taking the fight to the doorstep of the banks that are exploiting struggling homeowners, of corporations that are running away from communities and of lawmakers who choose to back them up.

Join the discussion below, and/or Post a New Comment.

What you neglected...

By Alan Maki | January 30, 2010 - 2:12pm GMT

Mr. Trumka; this is a nice sounding program.

Unfortunately it is missing some key elements to getting it off the ground.

First; there will be no job creating initiatives coming out of the Obama Administration nor from the Democrats because at present there is no money for a program on such a massive scale as you are suggesting because all of our public funds are financing Obama's dirty wars which will become an even bigger expense once the full-scale occupation of Iraq gets underway when Obama replaces U.S. troops with private "contractors--- mercenaries.

Second; who is going to join a struggle for jobs and end up being the last hired? You need to include support for affirmative action in your program.

Third; you need to be more explicit in just what kind of jobs you are talking about. You helped to kill single-payer universal healthcare so you lack any credibility when you say you are going to actually do something to build a movement for jobs.

We need a specific example of what people will be employed to do.

Why not advance the idea of a National Public Healthcare System... you know, socialized healthcare; a public healthcare center in every community in the country... start off with a base of 800 public healthcare centers and work the system out to the 30,000 neighborhood-based healthcare centers that will be required to tend to the healthcare needs of 300,000,000 Americans.

No-fees; no-premiums.
Comprehensive.
All-inclusive.
Pre-natal to grave.
Universal.
Public.
Publicly financed.
Publicly administered.
Publicly delivered.

Instead of 800 foreign U.S. military bases dotting the globe protecting the interests of Wall Street like Barack Obama is doing, we would build the base for a nation-wide network of public healthcare centers across this country which would create hundreds of thousand of jobs... millions of jobs that can't be exported overseas by the time we get this entire public healthcare system in place.

Working people in this country would never have learned to read and write had it not been for the public system of education... what makes you think that the "free-market" private sector will ever provide quality healthcare for American workers at an affordable price?

The "free-market" can't even deliver "affordable" transportation for the American people.

You talk about creating millions of jobs... you make me laugh. You can't even develop a program to save the existing industrial jobs in our country.

You sit by and twiddle your thumbs as the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant is about to close when the solution to saving this plant, the tax-payer financed hydro dam adjacent to the plant on the Mighty Mississippi that provided the Ford Motor Company with free power for 85 years instead of providing free heating and lighting for the public schools and public libraries--- when the solution is simple: public ownership of this plant... as many people have pointed out there are a myriad of things workers at this plant--- like the more than 3,500 idled mines, mills and factories across this country--- could be producing.

Do you want a five point program because it fits nicely into a package for a press conference; or, do you want a real jobs program based on what we need in our country?

The American people want jobs, not Obama's wars.

The American people want decent jobs paying real living wages.

People of color, women and the disabled don't want to be forced to wait at the end of the line to get jobs, only to lose their jobs first when the capitalist economy tanks.

By-the-way; what kind of resources has the AFL-CIO and your "coalition partners" allocated to help build a massive grassroots, rank-and-file movement to win jobs... enough for the next press conference?

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

Support Local 6500 striking against Vale Inco

2009-11-21T10:06:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-11-20T08:37:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-10-22T18:35:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-23T17:01:00.000-07:00

-----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?

2009-05-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-27T17:03:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-25T05:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-13T10:48:00.000-07:00

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.

Britney Spears can walk off stage because she doesn't want to inhale smoke... casino workers would be fired for walking off the job

2009-04-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

Is Barack Obama the kind of man someone representing a large constituency with a gripe can sit down and talk to, believing legitimate problems can be resolved; because, if so, I would like to talk to the guy to find out if there isn’t something that can be done about re-negotiating these “Compacts” creating the Indian Gaming Industry which has left two-million American workers employed in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights or protections under state or federal labor laws to endure the most extreme “at-will hiring, at-will firing” situation in the country, and without access to health care to boot.

I like the idea of Barack Obama that contracts are always re-negotiable based upon the circumstances... "Compacts" are contracts.

Certainly if auto contracts can be re-opened for re-negotiation there isn't any legitimate reason not to reopen the "Compacts" creating the Indian Gaming Industry to provide casino workers with the same rights and protections all other working people rely on in the United States.

As we can all see, the mobsters running the Indian Gaming Industry aren't that much different from the C.E.O.'s at A.I.G. or General Motors or Ford... and Bernie Madoff ran with them all to make deposits in the Cayman Islands.

I suppose if no one else wants to talk to Obama about what constitutes a living minimum wage based upon real cost of living factors and peace, I could talk to President Obama about these things, too.

In less than fifteen minutes I could probably convince President Obama why we need a “people’s bailout” which includes a moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions as well as the need to extend unemployment benefits from time of joblessness to reemployment.

I could probably make a pretty darn good argument to President Obama as to why we need 800 public health care centers scattered across the United States instead of financing over 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil now dotting the globe.

I wouldn’t mind talking to the guy about the benefits of socialism over capitalism, either; after all, Frank Marshall Davis--- a leading African-American Communist journalist and activist--- was his mentor for years.

Maybe President Obama would be willing to let journalists from the New York Times take in such a democratic endeavor; I know I would be all for it.

I can envision the headlines squeezed onto the obituary page of the New York Times: “Obama denies being a closet communist but meets with pissed off socialist worker.”

Spears temporarily halts concert in Vancouver, citing smoke in the air

VANCOUVER, B.C. — Pop singer Britney Spears may have gotten a little choked at GM Place on Wednesday night.

Spears walked off the stage briefly during her performance at the arena, citing smoke in the air. A spokesperson for Orca Bay Sports and Entertainment said Spears returned to the stage after the smoke cleared. The spokesperson said the smoke was from cigarettes and not marijuana, although smoking cigarettes indoors is illegal.

The pop star is on her current 'Circus' tour that includes stops in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom.

The tour may be expanded later to include Europe and Australia.

The tour is currently scheduled to end in Manchester, England, on June 17.

Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541
E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Check out my blog:

Thoughts From Podunk

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Stupid labor leaders and the corrupt Democratic Party have created a monster...

2009-01-27T19:24:00.000-08:00

Now here is some real food for thought...

Surprise, surprise.

Labor leaders who have invested workers' pension funds in some of these huge corporations and who pushed the Democrats to bailout Wall Street bankers and big business now cry that these same recipients of these public bailout funds are taking a lot of that money and "investing" it in the campaign to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act and undermine the rights of working people to organize... and these fools are the ones who are going to use the EFCA to organize workers?

Its time for working people to smarten up and get rid of these labor "leaders;" we need to dump the Democratic Party, too.

Alan L. Maki

Bailout Recipients Hosted Call To Defeat Key Labor Bill

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/bank-of-america-hosted-an_n_161248.
html
January 27, 2009 01:10 PM

Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of
America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and
business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top
legislative priority.

Participants on the October 17 call -- including at least one
representative from another bailout recipient, AIG -- were urged to
persuade their clients to send "large contributions" to groups working
against the Employee Free Trade Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate
Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.

Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, led the call along
with Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for
Union Facts. Over the course of an hour, the two framed the legislation as
an existential threat to American capitalism, or worse.

"This is the demise of a civilization," said Marcus. "This is how a
civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I'm
watching this happen and I don't believe it."

Donations of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to
Republican senatorial campaigns were needed, they argued, to prevent
America from turning "into France."

"If a retailer has not gotten involved in this, if he has not spent money
on this election, if he has not sent money to [former Sen.] Norm Coleman
and all these other guys, they should be shot. They should be thrown out
their goddamn jobs," Marcus declared.

Earlier he argued: "As a shareholder, if I knew the CEO of the company
wasn't doing anything on [EFCA]... I would sue the son of a bitch... I'm so
angry at some of these CEOs, I can't even believe the stupidity that is
involved here."

Audio of the conference call, which was obtained by the Huffington Post, is
excerpted throughout this piece to provide a clearer insight into the
pitched battle surrounding the Employee Free Choice legislation. At one
point, relatively early in the call, Marcus joked that he "took a
tranquilizer this morning to calm myself down."

"This bill may be one of the worst things I have ever seen in my life," he
said, explaining that he could have been on "a 350-foot boat out in the
Mediterranean," but felt it was more important to engage on this fight. "It
is incredible to me that anybody could have the chutzpah to try and pass
this bill in this election year, especially when we have an economy that is
a disaster, a total absolute disaster."

The legislation -- which would allow workers to form a union either by
holding a traditional election or having a majority of employees sign
written forms -- is virtually certain to face a Republican filibuster.
Obama and Senate Democrats have stated their commitment to the bill, though
the timing of the vote remains a topic of heated debate.

Weeks before the November election, Marcus, Berman, and others saw this
ominous political landscape taking shape. Hoping to aid opponents of EFCA
in the Senate, they pleaded with participants on the call, mostly stock
analysts or individuals with investment portfolios, to urge clients to prop
up the campaigns of endangered Republican candidates, including Norm
Coleman of Minnesota, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky,
Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

"If there are not enough Republicans operating as a firewall, after this
election it is going to be very difficult to hold the line," predicted
Berman. "The only way after these elections if we don't have a filibuster
proof Senate... is to make this issue so hot in some states so that even a
Democrat who is up for election in 2010 has to think twice about whether or
not they are going to let this thing go by."

At one point, another individual on the call suggested that participants
send major contributions to Berman's organization as a way of affecting the
election without violating the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. "Some
organizations have written checks for $250,000, $500,000, some $2 million
for this," said the man, likely Steven Hantler, the director of free
enterprise and entrepreneurship at Bernie Marcus' Marcus Foundation.

Citing the massive war chests that unions have brought to the EFCA fight,
Marcus asked participants to make campaign donations rather than lobbying
payments. "Fire all these guys in Washington," he said of the K-Street
operators, "they are worthless anyway."

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Berman said that there "was
nothing on that call that spoke to funneling money to anybody." Indeed, at
a separate point, Marcus discussed the need to contribute to issue advocacy
and education activities. The call, Berman continued, was designed to
explain some of the economic implications of passing EFCA and was "one of a
series with people around the country who are connected to businesses."

"There has been, though it has changed in the last few months, a fairly
significant deficit in terms of understanding what this law is about,"
Berman said. "I know a number of business groups have held calls with
people about the impact of this legislation... The unions who are a
proponent of this have not made it a high profile issue. I think they have
learned from their polling that it doesn't poll well, which is why they
don't' want to make it a public issue."

As for the business community, Berman added, "I do think that most
businesspeople fully appreciate the damage that out-of-control labor
leaders have caused for other businesses. There is no appetite for finding
out if you are going to have to be the next business to deal with other
labor issues."

A Bank of America spokesman declined a request for public comment, and the
bank's representative on the call played a minor role. The conference call
was referenced in a November 5 Bank of America research document, in which
the company noted that EFCA "increases the likelihood that retailers would
be unionized, which could drive higher labor cost at retail." On "the flip
side," however, the document said the bill would increase the "spending
power of lower income consumers as this would be a de facto wage and
benefit increase."

As evidenced by its dual interpretation of the legislation, Bank of
America's role in the EFCA fight is a bit murky. The company, as stated by
an official there, hosted the call for the purposes of equity research,
meaning that their goal was to represent the opinions of clients and not
the bank itself. But their involvement in an effort to drum up support for
defeating the labor-backed legislation, so soon after getting bail out
funds from the federal government, left a bad taste in the mouth of some
union officials.

"Bank of America is now not only getting bailout money. They are lending
their name to participate in a campaign to stop workers from having a
majority sign up [provision]," said Stephen Lerner, Director of the Private
Equity Project at SEIU. "The biggest corporations who have created the
problem are, at the very time, asking us to bail them out and then using
that money to stop workers from improving their lives."

State lawmakers bet gambling can help with budgets

2009-01-25T14:30:00.000-08:00

Not once has a single article in the mainstream media nor the alternative media ever addressed the issues surrounding the fact that some two-million casino workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry work under the most Draconian conditions--- smoke-filled casinos and poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws. This article continues in the same way without respect for working people.

State lawmakers bet gambling can help with budgets

By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press Writer Greg Bluestein, Associated Press Writer – Sun Jan 25, 2:24 pm ET AP

ATLANTA – A tell-tale sign America's chips are down: States are increasingly turning to gambling to plug budget holes.

Proposals to allow or expand slots or casinos are percolating in at least 14 states, tempting legislators and governors at a time when many must decide between cutting services and raising taxes.

Gambling has hard-core detractors in every state, but when the budget-balancing alternatives lawmakers must consider include reducing education funding or lifting sales taxes, resistance is easier to overcome, political analysts said.

"Who wouldn't be interested if you're a politician who needs to fund programs?" said Bo Bernhard, director of research at the International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas — a government-funded program.

While gambling has not been immune from the recession, it has held up relatively well compared with states' other revenue streams, such as income and sales taxes. This helps explain why past industry growth spurts have been preceded by economic downturns, experts said.

For example, Rhode Island opened the country's first racetrack casino in 1992, and four states soon followed. More recently, states faced with sagging revenues during the 2001 recession joined multistate lotteries such as Powerball and gave more leeway to Native American tribes seeking to expand their casinos.

Analysts say the latest round of gambling initiatives are noteworthy in volume and ambition — a sign that the industry aims to capitalize on states' badly bruised economies.

"From the gambling industry's point of view, this is their big chance," said Earl Grinols, an economics professor at Baylor University who specializes in gambling.

Ohio's casino advocates, including lobbyists working for Penn National Gambling Inc., are pushing a variety of large-scale development projects. In Georgia, a developer working with Dover Downs Inc., wants to transform a blighted section of downtown Atlanta with a 29-story hotel that would attract tourists with more than 5,500 video lottery terminals.

The developer pitching the $450 million Atlanta project, Dan O'Leary, estimates $300 million a year in revenues would be funneled to the state, helping to pay for a popular lottery-funded scholarship that provides in-state college tuition for students with "B" averages.

Even Hawaii, which along with Utah is one of two states without a lottery or other form of legalized gambling, may consider a change. Aides to Gov. Linda Lingle, long an opponent of gambling, say she is open to discussing it as a way to close the state's growing budget gap.

Gambling proponents are quick to tout its bells and whistles: a $54 billion annual industry that employs more than 350,000 people, with most state gambling revenues coming from lotteries, racetracks and betting devices such as slot and video poker machines. Twelve states reap tax money from full-fledged casinos, and 23 others have casinos on Native American reservations, which generally do not pay taxes to states.

But while advocates argue that casinos will help attract jobs and revitalize downtrodden areas, religious groups and other critics fear gambling has a disproportionately negative impact on lower-income people, and does not provide long-term economic growth.

They point to research that shows casinos attract crime, foster gambling addiction problems and divert money from other businesses.

"We've got gambling in 48 states, and you'd think if it worked, you wouldn't have budget problems or education problems," said Tom Gray, a field director for StopPredatoryGambling.org.

Many of the gambling proposals seek to expand footholds in states that already allow limited gambling.

Kentucky's House speaker had proposed allowing video gambling terminals at the state's racetracks, and legislators in New Hampshire, New York and Texas are seeing proposals this year to allow similar gambling terminals at their tracks. Casino advocates plan to push for casino-style gambling in hurricane-ravaged Galveston, Texas, as well.

Lawmakers in other states are talking about reversing hard-fought crusades to tighten restrictions on gambling.

Nine years after South Carolina lawmakers outlawed video poker, state Sen. Robert Ford is fighting to make it legal again. Since July, lawmakers have cut roughly $1 billion from the state's budget to address revenue shortfalls.

"Gambling ain't no blight on society," Ford said.

In Ohio, where voters repeatedly have rejected ballot proposals to expand gambling, Gov. Ted Strickland said he is willing to listen to proposals to help close a $7 billion shortfall in the next two-year budget.

While analysts have long considered gambling to be almost recession-proof, the economic downturn has seen layoffs, declining revenues and falling stock prices hit casinos. State-run lotteries are faring better, though: More than half of the states with lotteries have reported rising sales over the past six months.

Amid the rush to embrace gambling because of short-term budget problems, some experts say a long-term perspective is needed.

After gambling is approved and revenues are allocated, it's not something lawmakers are likely to reconsider down the road — no matter how much economic conditions may improve.

"Once you have legalized a form of gambling, the moral argument draws away and gambling is looked at as a cost-benefit analysis," said I. Nelson Rose, a gambling law professor at Whittier Law School in Orange County, Calif. "So many states have opened those doors now."

___

Associated Press Writer Seanna Adcox in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

The New York Times lavishes unjustified praise on Hilda Solis

2009-01-03T17:44:00.000-08:00

The New York Times is fully aware of Hilda Solis' miserable voting record in support of the "Compacts" creating the Indian Gaming Industry which now employs well over two-million workers in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state, federal or tribal labor laws.

Any Congressperson who would support sending human beings to work under such Draconian conditions cannot be expected to champion the rights of working people.

It is shameful and disgraceful that the New York Times would publish such an Editorial while never having had the courage to write one single word about the "Compacts" creating the Indian Gaming Industry which is run by a bunch of mobsters.

Not one single slot machine in this country is owned by a Native American band or tribe... this is an industry created using Native American communities as a front for organized crime in the same way the mobsters ran Cuba for so many years until the historic Cuban Revolution put an end to this "relationship" fifty years ago as they chased Batista and Meyer Lansky from the country.

This New York Times "Editorial" is as self-serving and hypocritical as the outfit calling itself "Progressives for Obama" whose leader and founder, Tom Hayden, who travels about the country singing similar praises for his colleague from California, Hilda Solis, while he voted for and supported the very same "Compacts" denying casino workers their basic human rights, dignity and a voice at work.

Of course, it is difficult to blame this country's mouth-piece for big-business in not taking up the issue of casino workers when John Sweeney and organized labor working in cahoots with the corrupt Democratic Party have turned a blind eye towards this injustice in favor of Democrats receiving huge campaign contributions from the Indian Gaming Industry.

The New York Times knows no shame... so, what's new?

Ignoring the plight of two-million casino workers in the Indian Gaming Industry fits in nicely with Barack Obama's newly discovered and adopted "politics of pragmatism."

Surprise, surprise; The New York Times has been a proponent of the not-so-new "politics of pragmatism" for many years because it serves capitalism so well.

What is also not new is that the "Progressives for Obama" founders--- also the founders of the "New Left" who aim to become the new leaders of the "new" New Left" are also are practitioners of the "politics of pragmatism;" Tom Hayden has been a practitioner of such politics for many years as he made the transition from student radical to AIPAC poster boy to fervent supporter of Barrack Obama so easily. Together with Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Carl Davidson and a host of anti-communists they have formed "Progressives for Obama." Is it any wonder that these "Progressives for Obama" would now hail this Editorial from the preeminent mouth-piece of Wall Street... The New York Times and sing similar praises for Hilda Solis who just happens to be another cheerleader for Israel's carnage of the Palestinian people... anti-labor, imperialist sleaze really does stick together.

As for the Employee Free Choice Act... isn't it strange the New York Times does not advocate rescinding "at-will hiring, at-will firing" legislation on the books in some twenty-eight states which will render the Employee Free Choice Act useless... apparently The New York Times knows something about "at-will hiring, at-will firing" which it would like to see not discussed anymore than the "Compacts" creating the Indian Casino Industry where casino workers are treated much like the Palestinian people.

Capitalism certainly spins a deadly web upon which these parasites feed upon their trapped victims... of course, the capitalist soothsayers at The New York Times live pretty high on the hog, too, for spreading lies and confusion. And, when these capitalist soothsayers at The New York Times are not spinning their lies in the service of imperialism; they simply ignore any indignities, abuses and injustices inflicted on working people as the capitalists extend their drive for ever greater profits and control... from American Indian reservations to Gaza.

The New York Times has a lot of gall talking about workplace health and safety standards as not a word has ever been published about how working in smoke-filled casinos is destroying the health of millions of workers at some 450 casinos comprising the Indian Gaming and Hospitality Industry stretching from coast to coast like "right to work for less without any rights colonies." Gees, kind of like Puerto Rico and Gaza.

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

New York Times Editorial - December 28, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/opinion/29mon1.html

There is no doubt that President-elect Barack Obama has
chosen a labor secretary who could be a transformative
force in a long-neglected arena. The question is
whether he will let her.

Hilda Solis, a United States representative from
Southern California, is the daughter of immigrant
parents with union jobs. She has been an unfailing
advocate of workers' rights during eight years in
Congress and before that, in California politics.

Ms. Solis has been a leader on traditional workplace
issues, like a higher minimum wage and an enhanced
right to form unions. She also has helped to expand the
labor agenda by sponsoring legislation to create jobs
in green technology, and in her support for community
health workers and immigration reform.

Her record in Congress dovetails with the mission of
the Labor Department, to protect and further the rights
and opportunities of working people. It also dovetails
with many of the promises Mr. Obama made during the
campaign, both in its specifics and in its focus on the
needs of America's working families.

The main issue is whether the Obama administration will
assert a forceful labor agenda in the face of certain
protests from business that now - during a recession
- is not the time to move forward.

The first and biggest test of Mr. Obama's commitment to
labor, and to Ms. Solis, will be his decision on
whether or not to push the Employee Free Choice Act in
2009. Corporate America is determined to derail the
bill, which would make it easier than it has been for
workers to form unions by requiring that employers
recognize a union if a majority of employees at a
workplace sign cards indicating they wish to organize.

Ms. Solis voted for the bill when it passed the House
in 2007. Senate Republicans prevented the bill from
coming to a vote that same year. Mr. Obama voted in
favor of bringing the bill to the Senate floor and
supported it during the campaign.

The measure is vital legislation and should not be
postponed. Even modest increases in the share of the
unionized labor force push wages upward, because
nonunion workplaces must keep up with unionized ones
that collectively bargain for increases. By giving
employees a bigger say in compensation issues, unions
also help to establish corporate norms, the absence of
which has contributed to unjustifiable disparities
between executive pay and rank-and-file pay.

The argument against unions - that they unduly burden
employers with unreasonable demands - is one that
corporate America makes in good times and bad, so the
recession by itself is not an excuse to avoid pushing
the bill next year. The real issue is whether enhanced
unionizing would worsen the recession, and there is no
evidence that it would.

There is a strong argument that the slack labor market
of a recession actually makes unions all the more
important. Without a united front, workers will have
even less bargaining power in the recession than they
had during the growth years of this decade, when they
largely failed to get raises even as productivity and
profits soared. If pay continues to lag, it will only
prolong the downturn by inhibiting spending.

Another question clouding the labor agenda is whether
Mr. Obama will give equal weight to worker concerns -
from reforming health care to raising the minimum wage
- while the financial crisis is still playing out.
Most members of his economic team are veterans of the
Clinton administration who tilt toward Wall Street. In
the Clinton era, financial issues routinely trumped
labor concerns. If Mr. Obama's campaign promises are to
be kept, that mindset cannot prevail again. Mr. Obama's
creation of a task force on middle-class issues, to be
led by Vice President-elect Joseph Biden and including
Ms. Solis and other high-ranking officials, is an
encouraging sign that labor issues will not be given
short shrift.

There are many nonlegislative issues on the agenda for
Ms. Solis. Safety standards must be updated: in the
last eight years, the Labor Department has issued only
one new safety rule of its own accord; it issued a few
others only after being compelled by Congress or the
courts. Overtime rules that were weakened in 2004 need
to be restored. To enforce labor standards, the Labor
Department will need more staff and more money, both of
which have been cut deeply by President Bush.

Only the president can give the new labor secretary the
clout she will need to do well at a job that has been
done so badly for so long, at such great cost to the
quality of Americans' lives.

Obama's cabinet selections

2008-12-18T17:06:00.000-08:00

U.S. Representative Hilda Solis is the latest Cabinet selection of Barack Obama aimed at dividing the working class... most all his Cabinet selections have this in common.

That Rep. Hilda Solis comes highly approved by David Bonior tells us the two-million casino workers employed at more than 450 smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws will continue.

Rep. Hilda Solis has been a champion of the Indian Gaming Industry while refusing to stand for justice for casino workers.

So, what is new about Obama's appointments... we are going to see the most corrupt, anti-labor Administration in U.S. history under Barack Obama.

Neither Hilda Solis nor David Bonior ever challenged "at-will hiring, at-will firing" legislation on the books in twenty-eight states in spite of the fact that "at-will hiring, at-will firing" is the major impediment to union organizing; an impediment that not even the Employee Free Choice Act can over come.

Representative Hilda Solis--- One more worthless hypocrite in Washington D.C.

Questions for Dean Baker and Robert Borosage...

2008-12-12T17:05:00.000-08:00

Dean Baker and Robert Borosage are crying about the auto companies not getting a government handout but they never complained when the Big Three were making a lot of money and told the American people to go to hell.

The Big Three reaped the short-term profits now they want us to clean up the long-term mess.

Questions for Dean Baker and Robert Borosage...

How come the Canadian government is kicking in three-billion dollars for this Big Three bailout when this is not a Canadian problem?

More important, who cares about the profits of the auto industry except to the extent that these profits are the result of unpaid labor and represent the theft of wealth?

You completely ignore the little fact that the Big Three took those profits they accumulated off the backs of U.S. and Canadian workers in North America; and, like all good capitalists do, they went in quest of cheap labor and natural resources over-seas... you seem to forget that they took the profits with them.

Here is a letter I sent to someone who sent me a letter crying that tax-payers should bailout the Big Three lest these companies going broke create misery for the people of Detroit:

Jane,

You wrote:

Mr. Maki,

I don't know who you are or why you are writing me, but as much as I may agree in principle to much of what you said, living in Detroit and seeing the suffering of working families might jar your ideology a bit. The failure of this "bailout" is utterly anti-union and the suffering here in Detroit will be enormous.

Jane Cassady
bhturtle@aol.com
YES, WE DID!

I received this… written and distributed by you:

From: BHTURTLE
Sent: 12/11/2008 6:28:45 P.M. Eastern Standard Time
Subj: HELP!

Michigan's Gov, Jennifer Granholm, just went on TV to ask everyone in Michigan to contact people in other states who have Republican senators and ask you to call your senator's office immediately and let them know you want them to approve Big 3 help without the sudden union busting amendment these hypocrites just tacked on. It apparently was fine to give their ultra-rich friends billions in the financial sector without strings, but now they want auto workers to take HUGE concessions to get any $ for the companies. It's just outrageous. I am sending this to people in Michigan as well, so you can contact your friends also. The worst senators so far in this is Shelby (Alabama), Kyl (AZ), McConnell (KY) and actually just about every other Republican. Please pass this on to your friends also. It may happen as soon as tonight.

All you have to do is google your senator, or go to the US senate website if you can't remember the name...use the # to call (You'll either get some staff person or a voice mail, and also send an email if you can. ). All you have to say is that you want your senator to support Bridge loans to the Auto companies without the anti-union, anti-worker amendment.

Thanks everyone,

Jane

Jane Cassady
bhturtle@aol.com
YES, WE DID!

I am writing you because your call for support of this fiasco and boondoggle reached my desk--- as you obviously intended your call for support of the auto bailout to be distributed widely.

When you distribute such material it is kind of arrogant of you to assume that people with contrary views will not state their opinions in response to you.

You say you don’t know me. So what? What does knowing me have to do with what I sent you? You were not concerned that your cry for this bailout and tears for the demise of the auto industry and loss of three million jobs would reach those like me who you do not know.

However, now we are somewhat acquainted; so, allow me to speak frankly with you.

I think if auto workers and their union leaders acting under the guise of their union are going to mobilize behind a scheme initiated by their employers in a way that drags the rest of us in we all have a right to express our views.

Who am I?

I work with casino workers trying to organize in the Indian Gaming Industry. I am constantly chasing UAW members out of these casinos. Apparently the UAW has no sympathy, empathy nor concern for solidarity with other workers struggling for justice.

I requested of Ron Gettelfinger that he instruct Nadine Nossal--- the UAW’s lead lobbyist in Lansing, Michigan--- to “vigorously oppose” the Gun Lake Casino “Compact;” another “Compact” that will send another two-thousand workers in the Indian Gaming Industry into smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state, federal or tribal labor laws who will join some two-million other workers employed under the same Draconian conditions at over 450 such casino ventures strung out across the United States. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger did nothing as far as acting on my request to him… now he expects the entire nation to respond in support of turning billions of tax-payer dollars over to a pack of crooks and exploiters who mis-managed their industry into oblivion as they raked in tremendous profits. Where are these billions of dollars in profits generated over the last one-hundred years… this wealth has not disappeared into thin air. Those who have adamantly opposed little children getting free lunches in school and have pushed pan-handlers off the streets into prison cells and turned their backs on the hungry and homeless are now begging for billions of dollars in handouts from tax-payers.

Since Ron Gettelfinger and Nadine Nossal have no concern for the plight of casino workers I couldn’t care less if the auto workers see their standard of living brought down to the level of casino workers in the Indian Gaming Industry... then we will all be in the same sinking boat.

Don’t expect us to pay for something the UAW will not support for us. Don’t cry to me about the future of auto workers in Detroit when Ron Gettelfinger has not demonstrated any concern for the plight of their sisters and brothers in the casino industry in outstate Michigan.

I have put forward suggestions to save the auto industry that would be in EVERYONE’S best interest, including auto workers. We all invest… we all own what we invest in… auto workers come out ahead with their contract intact and their livelihoods and standard of living protected as the profiteers and exploiters are pushed out of the picture as vehicles required by society are produced… Wall Street coupon clippers lose; auto workers and tax-payers win.

You reject my suggestions. You come back with you may agree with me in “principle;” I would suggest that you organize people with your “principles” in mind to stand up and fight for those “principles” rather than making the rest of us suffer… and make no mistake about this: the real intent of the Big Three CEO’s bringing forward this bailout request is because they see an opportunity to get out from under their contractual obligations… the auto industry “broke?” Give me a break. They took the profits they made from North American workers and invested those profits overseas in cheap resource and labor markets; and now, not one single congress person, nor one single leader of the UAW has forced these swindlers to even prove they are broke by demanding they open up their books, including of their international operations.

If you really believe that handing over billions of dollars to the Big Three CEO’s will resolve anything; I suggest that the UAW invest its pension and health care funds in this bailout and leave the rest of us out of this.

The other thing autoworkers could do is re-open their contract with the Big Three and agree to work for seven dollars an hour like casino workers do until the management of the Big Three feel they can pay them back with some interest.

The math is really very simple; figure it out.

Three weeks ago I explained to a leader of a large auto local in Detroit the injustices casino workers are being subjected to as he plunked his quarters into a slot machine at the Odawa casino in Petoskey, Michigan. He told me, “Leave me alone; I came here to have fun. Now, if you don’t get out of here I am calling security to toss you out. Buddy, I don’t know who you are.”

So I gave him my card and told him that the next time I catch him sitting at a slot machine wearing his nice fancy UAW jacket I am going to take his picture and plaster it all over the Internet.

Further, I would point out that for over five years we have been fighting to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant and Ron Gettelfinger would not even bring the weight of the UAW into the struggle by supporting a very basic piece of legislation brought forward by a group of progressive Democratic state legislators which would have prevented Ford from demolishing the plant until we could find a new venture for the plant--- either public or private or a combination of the two.

I do not mean to sound rude nor uncaring; but, I suggest that you fight for nationalization of the auto industry under public ownership because you know as well as I do that we are in the midst of a very serious economic crisis--- a depression--- and most working people just will never be able to afford a thirty-thousand dollar vehicle under these circumstances--- so, who is going to purchase the vehicles that autoworkers will build?

Only fools would support the present bailout package aimed at bailing out the Wall Street coupon clippers, bankers and top corporate management.

By the way, because the auto industry has been operated for the sole purpose of profit is the reason Detroit is mired in poverty. The wealth created by workers has been systematically stolen… this is what capitalism is all about.

Beyond the very mild reform--- given the depth of this crisis--- of nationalizing the auto industry; you might want to extend your principles to getting rid of this thoroughly rotten and corrupt capitalist system which has morphed into a parasitical imperialist beast bringing misery to billions of working people across the globe.

Oh, you might want to contact Governor Granholm and suggest to her that she call on the Michigan Senate to reject the Gun Lake Casino “Compact” so it can be renegotiated to include protection of rights for casino workers… we are all, sisters and brothers in struggle together for a better life, right?

Also, could you remind Ron Gettelfinger that many of us have concerns, in addition to the future of the auto industry, which extend to trying to create a better life for the rest of us, too.

Perhaps the auto industry should be turned over to the managers of the Indian Gaming Industry under the terms of these “Compacts?” What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

You might want to check out this blog about the future of the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant which I created before you start lecturing me as if I don’t care about the plight of auto workers and the communities they live in:

http://capitalistglobalization.blogspot.com/

Now, let’s act on the principles we have in common and fight like hell to save the jobs and livelihoods and protect the standard of living of auto workers as we fight like hell to do the same for the entire working class and all working class communities.

I would suggest you consider what the management of the Big Three really want along with their “bridge loan”:

“But McConnell said the measure "isn't nearly tough enough." The Kentucky Republican also called for a different bill — one that would force U.S. automakers to slash wages and benefits to bring them in line with Japanese carmakers Nissan, Toyota and Honda — in return for any federal aid.”

See complete article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/congress_autos

United States Steel announced they are closing down a huge taconite operation on the Iron Range. Will Ron Gettelfinger call for a bailout of United States Steel, too?

You might also want to check out what I wrote on my blog on the Obama website concerning the “Main Street Recovery Program:”

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/alanmaki/gGx898

Check out this pamphlet by Frederick Engels… this is what he wrote in “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:”

Commerce is at a standstill, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsaleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for years; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filter off, more or less depreciated in value, until production and exchange gradually begin to move again. Little by little the pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit and speculation, which finally, after breakneck leaps, ends where it began--in the ditch of a crisis. And so over and over again. We have now, since the year 1825, gone through this five times, and at the present moment (1877) we are going through it for the sixth time.... The fact that the socialised organisation of production within the factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the anarchy of production in society, which exists side by side with and dominates it, is brought home to the capitalists themselves by the violent concentration of capital that occurs during crises, through the ruin of many large, and a still greater number of small, capitalists. The whole mechanism of the capitalist mode of production breaks down under the pressure of the productive forces, its own creations. It is no longer able to turn all this mass of means of production into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason the industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means of production, means of subsistence, available labourers, all the elements of production and of general wealth, are present in abundance. But "abundance becomes the source of distress and want" (Fourier), because it is the very thing that prevents the transformation of the means of production and subsistence into capital. For in capitalistic society the means of production can only function when they have undergone a preliminary transformation into capital, into the means of exploiting human labour power.

Frederick Engels's---
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific/
part of his...
Anti Dühring/
New York: International Publishers, 1935, pages 64-65

How much longer are we going to endure such a rotten capitalist system that creates so much human misery over and over and over again?

With, or without, this bailout, auto workers and the people of Detroit are going to suffer immensely--- just like the rest of us.

Take care.

Yours in solidarity and in struggle,

Alan L. Maki

Director of Organizing,

Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Check out my blog:

Thoughts From Podunk

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: BHTURTLE@aol.com [mailto:BHTURTLE@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2008 6:13 AM
To: amaki000@centurytel.net
Subject: Re: auto bailout

Mr. Maki,

I don't know who you are or why you are writing me, but as much as I may agree in principle to much of what you said, living in Detroit and seeing the suffering of working families might jar your ideology a bit. The failure of this "bailout" is utterly anti-union and the suffering here in Detroit will be enormous.

Jane Cassady
bhturtle@aol.com
YES, WE DID!

In a message dated 12/11/2008 11:28:55 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, amaki000@centurytel.net writes:

This Letter to the Editor is submitted to the Star Tribune for publication; writer grants Editor the right to edit as seen fit.

November 12, 2008

First Wall Street Bankers. Now the Big Three automakers. Who is coming for a handout and free lunch next? The lobbying industry?

The government is prepared to let the St. Paul Ford Twin City Assembly Plant and two-thousand jobs go down the river because there was no money to save this one plant and now tax-payers are being told, not even asked, that they will be bailing out the entire auto industry.

Obviously free enterprise has failed. Why should tax-payers bailout the Big Three when in a few months the price of each of the Big Three's stocks should be less than one-dollar a share.

Tax-payers will have the opportunity to purchase the entire automotive industry for a real bargain for far less than what the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing us.

A board consisting of all the stake-holders could be brought together and we could finally produce quality products which are environmentally friendly... not to mention affordable.

Capitalism hasn't worked; socialism will.

The Big Three cry poverty after they have taken the wealth created by North American workers and invested that wealth in quest of cheaper labor and resources overseas.

I don't believe politicians would even consider turning over one penny to these greedy corporations without even having had the opportunity to see their books... all the books, including their international operations.

What tax-payers finance, tax-payers should own.

Nationalization under public ownership is the solution to the problems of the auto industry.

The time has come to put People, Jobs and the Environment Before Corporate Profits!

Alan L. Maki

58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Check out my blog:

Thoughts From Podunk

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

A dialogue concerning the important struggle of Republic Windows and Doors workers

2008-12-12T09:47:00.000-08:00

I am republishing Earl Silbar's commentary and analysis here because, for one, I agree with it completely... and two, I think there is much all workers can learn from this struggle.

This struggle requires a book, at least a pamphlet, blog or website written collectively by all those who were participants in this struggle--- first and foremost the workers who made the decision to fight rather than accept an injustice along with those who acted in solidarity as Earl Silbar did and continues to do in writing and distributing his thoughts and observations.

Alan L. Maki

-----Original Message-----
From: WCS-A@yahoogroups.com [mailto:WCS-A@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Red1pearl@aol.com

Sent: Friday, December 12, 2008 11:06 AM

To: chi-labor-against-the-war@yahoogroups.com; anticapdiscuss@yahoogroups.com; chicagomayday@yahoogroups.com; Working_Class_News@yahoogroups.com; RailroadWorkersUnited@googlegroups.com; core@lists.riseup.net; WCS-A@yahoogroups.com

Subject: [WCS-A] Re: Workers Republic -- upcoming video/discussion

The Republic Windows plant occupation and victory has raised some issues (and a video clip ) below with my comments here, fyi.

The Republic Windows workers took "matters into their own hands"yes, but not outside of or against their union, the UE. To suggest otherwise is, from everything I saw and heard, simply wrong. My understanding- based on going to both major rallies, listening to a few workers inside the plant, and talking with one worker there for a while, watching the UE refuse to support settlement until the workers voted on it- is this: the workers discussed the situation and voted unanimously to occupy the plant as part of a union- called meeting, with union organizers there and with the active, actually vital, support of their union at all levels. Same with the unanimous decision to accept the settlement: it was at a union-called meeting as well. To portray this otherwise is simply inaccurate, misleading and unintentionally harmful

While some of us on the left might want this to have been a 'workers republic' (as the video title calls it), it was not a worker-run plant, let alone a republic,however cute the play on words, this being Republic Windows. Nor a workers action outside of union leadership/control (as comrade Sean puts it here). Imposing our ideas on reality harms everyone's ability to understand what did happen and learn from it.

In fact, this was a defensive fight to win pay/benefits owed them under federal (and state) law. There was concern for the switch of work to the newly-bought plant in Iowa, hence occupation to use the equipment and inventory as 'collateral' or hold it hostage to a settlement for those wages/benefits. The workers chose to bypass the legal system, violate property laws, and put themselves at risk of arrest and serious charges to win what the law _said_ was theirs. Thus, it was both legally-based and illegally fought. They had little/nothing to lose; they were out of work with 3 days notice; they got no severance pay despite the WARN federal law mandating 60 days notice of closings, their medical insurance was cancelled the last day of work; and their vacation pay was killed. What did they expect? To be taken to jail.

Several workers told me that they were simply astonished at the solidarity they experienced, with hundreds at rallies, people and groups of union workers coming to the plant with coffee, food, blankets, money, comradeship, solidarity greetings, and cheer. The Republic workers' bold, organized, and self-disciplined action thrilled millions who are sick with fear and filled with anger at billions for bankers, nothing for workers. Their fight was our fight; in a very real sense, their actions were the flame of worker resistance so many have been waiting for. After decades of defeats where the unions' leaders have sabotaged the struggles, from PATCO on, we stood our grounds and won with union support, not sabotage.

At the same time, Sean asks where were the leaders of the Chicago Federation of Labor, with their huge membership numbers? Good question.In fact, the Fed and its unions did nothing visible to build the rally either at the plant on Saturday or at the Bank of America on Wednesday. No Fed officials spoke, no union banners, no visible delegations except a few AFSCME staffers while hundreds of AFSCME nearby members likely were not even told of the rally. I did see some from Teamsters 705. The SEIU, invisible despite they too having many members downtown, reportedly struck a deal on Tuesday with the Bank of America /Republic owners for just the vacation pay. The workers/UE did not even vote on this reported deal; from that failure, some longtime worker-activists deduce that SEIU pulled out its support of the Bank of America rally. Perhaps this accounts for the failure of the Chicago Fed officers to also show up. Can't say. Asks them.

Politically, the Republic/UE slogan "Bank of America, you got bailed out, we got sold out!" was astute and on every UE picket sign. It tapped into the huge resentment and anger at the (bi-partisan) giveaway to the thieves. It connceted this fight with larger class forces and feeling. In fact, the union was intimately involved, from beginning to end, top to bottom. If one has criticisms of UE's leadership, be specific and not project our wishes onto that reality. Making Procrustean beds is no substitute for concrete analysis.

And wishful thinking is no substitute for building on the actual developments with all their potential and limitations. This was not a 'Workers' Republic' despite the video title: they did not attempt to run production. Nor was it a workers' fight without or against their union as suggested below. Personally, I wished this had developed into a fight to stop the union-busting move to switch production to a non-union plant, but it did not. That was not the workers' objective as voted and acted on.

Did the union leadership encourage this limitation? I don't know. Was there worker sentiment to fight to keep the plant open? Some. Was the decision to limit the occupation to what was the workers' legal rights correct, given the actual forces on both sides? Could a fight for keeping the plant here open have won? I don't know that either. Only people or groups with contacts in the plant and able to estimate what kind of action-solidarity on many fronts was available for such a major confrontation. Another life-lesson on the need for an organization devoted to worker-socialism, revolution, etc.

In any case, this fight was a great development and a powerful sign of what workers can do with action. Our power comes as workers,not litigants or consumers. The potential of workers' struggle and solidarity came through. This fight was our fight, and we WON!

in solidarity,

Earl Silbar

And for those conflicted about undocumented/illegal immigrants, I have a question: these were mostly Mexican workers, so did you worry about their immigration status, or did you support their fight as just and as our fight? Maybe the fact that they were Mexican and Black meant that they were more willing to take such action. Maybe N. American (white) workers and others have lots to learn from those pressed down, such as our brothers and sisters from Republic Windows.

In a message dated 12/12/2008 8:57:06 A.M. Central Standard Time, LOUGHFINN@AOL.COM writes:

This is a great victory. I am excited to see the video. But i would like to ask those reading this to consider one detail . You mention that the workers took "matters into their own hands." It is very good they did. because if they had not the union leaders would not have moved to occupy. As far as I know there are up to $1 million workers affiliated to the Chicago Federation od Labour. Where were the leaders of this huge force. It was left up to the workers themselves, the left and religious groups who supported them to take action. And of course the odd capitalist politician who saw the way the wind was blowing and decided to take wing. Thanks for making the video.

Sean

Check us out:
www.weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com
www.laborsmilitantvoice.com
www.myspace.com/lmvprofile

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Duncan
To: mail@laborbeat.org
Sent: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 6:33 am
Subject: [chi-labor-against-the-war] Workers Republic -- excerpts from upcoming Labor Beat show -- YouTube link

Workers' Republic - excerpts

Click here to see on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiFzP48UHYw

When the workers at Republic Windows and Doors were notified their factory would close in three days, they took matters into their own hands. The union work force seized control of the factory for 6 days to demand the severance they are owed by law. On the sixth day of their occupation, they won all their demands, and showed the world's working class a classic example of people power (something not seen in the USA for decades).

This short video from Labor Beat represents a fraction of our coverage of this historic event. The full 30-minute episode, "Workers' Republic," will be uploaded soon.

Copyright 2008 Labor Beat. Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is affiliated with IBEW 1220. Views expressed are those of the producer, not necessarily of IBEW. For info: lduncan@igc.org,www.laborbeat.org. 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit Google Video or YouTube and search "Labor Beat".

Scenes during the occupation
Photo: Andrew Freund / Labor Beat

Arguing for nationalizing the banks, he argued,

"...no effective control of any kind over the individual banks and their operations is possible ... because it is impossible to keep track of the extremely complex, involved and wily tricks that are used in drawing up balance sheets, founding fictitious enterprises and subsidiaries, enlisting the services of figureheads, and so on, and so forth."

Vladimir Lenin, Sept. 1917, "The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It." Collected Works vol. 25.

Human Rights Day, the AFL-CIO, the Democrats and workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry

2008-12-10T14:24:00.000-08:00

Two-million workers are employed at more that 450 smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state, federal or tribal labor laws in the Indian Gaming Industry and John Sweeney and the AFL-CIO refuse to acknowledge the injustice of these circumstances as gross human rights abuses.

This is the statement of the AFL-CIO issued on the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Why hasn't the AFL-CIO leafleted the 450 casinos employing over two-million workers left to fend for themselves at the hands of a bunch of mobsters and the Fertitta family together with the likes of Floyd Jourdain, Melony Benjamin and Stanley Crooks here in the United States of America under such Draconian conditions?

Human Rights Day, 2008: U.S. Workers Still Lack the Freedom to Form Unions

by Seth Michaels, Dec 10, 2008

The Employee Free Choice Act, a vital bill to restore workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life, is a top priority for working families in the new Congress. Today, as we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it’s important to remember how crucial it is to protect the right of workers to form unions to protect fair pay, good benefits and a safe work environment.

Around the country today, union volunteers are marking the anniversary by leafleting worksites and getting the message out about the Employee Free Choice Act. In coming weeks, labor councils around the country hold meetings to spread the word about this critical bill to restore worker power and rebuild the middle class.

The Employee Free Choice Act is under heavy attack from CEOs and Big Business lobbyists. One of the country’s largest employers, McDonald’s, is taking the anti-worker side in the fight over the bill.

Crain’s Chicago Business reveals that in a Nov. 25 memo to franchise owners, McDonald’s USA President Don Thompson stakes out the company’s opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act and asks franchisees to support anti-Employee Free Choice Act politicians. (Sound familiar? That’s because Wal-Mart pulled the same trick with its managers this year.)

Why is McDonald’s trying to block a bill that would restore workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life? Because it might actually result in workers bargaining for a better life. As Crain’s notes:

With more than 600,000 U.S. restaurant workers, many earning less than $10 an hour, the chain makes an attractive target for union organizers. Unionized employees could demand higher pay and stricter work rules in McDonald’s kitchens.

Apparently, McDonald’s likes the current company-dominated system just fine—it allows them to keep workers in low-paying “McJobs.”

McDonald’s is a member of the National Restaurant Association, a business lobbying group that funds the cunningly misnamed Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, a major corporate front group in the campaign to block the freedom to form unions.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says McDonald’s effort to block the Employee Free Choice Act is an attack on workers and the middle class.

Working people know that the bargaining power they gain through unions for fair wages, better health care, pensions and job security is our nation’s single best tool for creating an economy that works for all—60 million say they’d join a union tomorrow if given the chance. In launching a campaign to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, McDonald’s has taken direct aim at the customers and communities it serves and is shooting down their best chance at realizing their aspirations for their families and futures.

Crain’s makes the mistake of relying for its reporting on Rick Berman, a Washington, D.C., lobbyist who has built his career around undermining unions, fighting consumer protections and protecting corporate power. Berman is involved with anti-Employee Free Choice Act front groups, and, without scrutinizing his connections, Crain’s takes for granted Berman’s misleading description of the bill. (It’s a mistake that numerous media outlets are making. The Washington Post relied on Berman as a source for a misleading article on the Employee Free Choice Act yesterday, without mentioning his lobbying activities. Economist Dean Baker called the article “incorrect” on the key facts.)

As Sweeney says, the Employee Free Choice Act is about leveling the playing field and giving workers a stake, and the big corporations who are fighting to block it are benefiting from the imbalance of power.

Corporations like McDonald’s and their CEOs hold all the cards in today’s economy and working families are left to struggle with the economy they leave behind. McDonald’s CEO James Skinner took home over $12.3 million in total compensation last year. If he were paid by the hour, he would make nearly 600 times the less than $10/hour pay of many of McDonald’s 600,000 employees.

As we remember the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, let’s speak out against corporations like McDonald’s, who are putting corporate power ahead of the freedom to form unions.

With "at-will hiring, at-will firing" legislation in twenty-eight states, ignored by the leadership of the AFL-CIO; but, understood by every rank-and-file union organizer and activist as being the main and primary impediment to union organizing... when combined with the plight of casino workers employed in the smoke-filled casinos of the Indian Gaming Industry at poverty wages and without any rights ignored by the AFL-CIO leadership, this statement from the AFL-CIO's web site is the epitome of hypocrisy.

When politicians and employers read such statements based upon what everyone knows is a false sense of compassion and concern for working people, no employer will ever fear the AFL-CIO knowing that even with the Employee Free Choice Act the AFL-CIO leadership is nothing but a bunch of big-blowhards that couldn't muster the common sense to organize an escape from a wet paper bag; much less act to empower working people to organize in defense of their human rights at work and in the communities where they live.

For over twenty-years, casino workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry have been impatiently waiting for the words of these big-blowhard leaders like President John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO to match their deeds.

Again, on the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights we get profound statements not backed up by the allocation of resources to organize in defense of the human rights of working people.

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

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by Alan L. Maki on Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 9:01am

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