Amy Berglund, Regional Representative, United States Senator Carl Levin;
Please find below a letter I sent to President-elect Barack H. Obama and “Cc’ed” to others.
I trust that this will satisfy your requirement per our conversation in your Escanaba, Michigan office concerning your looking into the plight of casino workers.
Should you have further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me by e-mail or by letter-- U.S. Post. I think it best, given you deny knowing nothing about the situation casino workers find themselves in through no fault of their own but as a direct result of actions taken by United States Senator Carl Levin and other federal and state legislators along with state and federal agencies, that we keep everything in writing so there is now a clear and permanent record since you are the one to have requested that I provide you with something in writing before you would bring yourself up to speed on this issue.
I trust that you will have the necessary discussion with Senator Levin concerning what can, and will, be done to remedy this grave injustice.
Please respond that you received this e-mail.
Feel free to show this letter to anyone; I place no restrictions on its use.
I remind you that there are thousands of workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry within your region.
I urge you to familiarize yourself with the “Compacts” enabling these casinos to exist with workers being denied their most basic and fundamental human rights--- by intent.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Cc:
President Maggie Bird, Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Saturday, December 6, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama asked to resolve injustices of casino workers
President-elect Barack H. Obama;
I write to you on behalf of the workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry at the suggestion of a number of concerned labor and human rights activists.
Some two-million Americans work in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state, federal or tribal labor laws in the Indian Gaming Industry as a result of the "Compacts" creating this industry.
What do you intend to do to correct this injustice?
Sovereignty is NOT an issue. There are around 200 sovereign nations in the world today and none of these sovereign nations are without any rights for working people.
In fact, these "Compacts" allow for state and FBI enforcement of state and federal statutes involving criminal activity.
In fact, these "Compacts" allow for state regulatory agencies to assure that slot machines are in compliance.
But, when it comes to protecting the rights (human rights) of workers there are no provisions in these "Compacts" to protect the rights of workers.
There are now over 450 such gaming establishments (casinos/resorts/restaurants/hotels/motels/amusement and theme parks) comprising the Indian Gaming Industry.
Congress and the Department of Interior along with various other state and federal governments and agencies are involved.
If "sovereignty" was the reason for the federal and state governments remaining aloof from protecting the rights of these workers there would be no need for the state or federal governments and various state and federal agencies to be involved in the Indian Gaming Industry because Indian Nations would not be coerced to come to state and federal governments for approval vis-à-vis these "Compacts" in the first place.
I would call to your attention that the Provincial government of Manitoba, Canada remedied this very easily by telling tribal governments that unless they made their casinos smoke-free the government would not consider any further approval for new casinos or casino expansions.
The United States government could very easily do the same thing and insist that before any further "Compacts" are entered into they would have to include smoke-free provisions and provisions that all state and federal labor laws would be adhered to and state and federal departments of labor would be responsible for enforcement.
That some two-million workers (not including those who quit or get fired which comprises many more workers because of the huge turn-over) are employed under such draconian conditions in the United States of America is shameful.
We expect that the Employee Free Choice Act will be written to include these workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry before you sign it.
We further expect that you will address the issue of the need to rescind "at-will hiring, at-will firing" legislation in some twenty-eight states which as it stands would render "card check" useless.
Right now there is the "Gun Lake Casino Compact" pending in the Michigan Senate, having been approved by Governor Jennifer Granholm and the Michigan House with the full knowledge by Governor Granholm and each member of the Michigan Legislature that this was one more "Compact" which would deny basic and fundamental human rights to another two-thousand casino workers. Since you have such a chummy relationship with Governor Granholm and David Bonior who is supposed to be a champion of labor rights you should have no problem convincing Governor Granholm that she should request this "Compact" be withdrawn for approval pending the suggestion that the rights of casino workers must be included... this would set a precedent that would be difficult for future "Compacts" to ignore.
Also, you should be aware that second-hand smoke in the workplace has been designated as one of the primary health concerns by the American Cancer Society and the Heart and Lung Foundation. Further, many casino workers are women of child-bearing age, pregnant women and nursing mothers for whom the health hazards and dangers of second-hand smoke are known to be very vulnerable.
Two issues are involved with the problem of second-hand smoke for casino workers.
First is the obvious direct health factor.
Second, is the fact that you have talked a great deal about cutting health care costs. Common sense dictates that millions, if not billions, of dollars can be saved in health care costs by eliminating smoking in the Indian Gaming Industry.
Scientific figures are not available for second-hand smoke related health care issues and costs in the Indian Gaming Industry because these casino managements have refused to participate in the collection of data by state and federal agencies and the American Cancer Society and Heart and Lung Foundation which raises another grave concern related not only to worker health in the place of employment, but the human rights of workers to be made aware of the health dangers in the workplace.
In short, workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry have no rights at work; they have no voice at work. Workers employed under these conditions have no rights and no voice in the communities where they live lest the employer finds out about activities considered to be inappropriate.
At the largest casino operation in Minnesota, and one of the largest in the Indian Gaming Industry in the United States of America employing over 5,000 workers... Mystic Lake Casino/Resort/Hotel/Restaurants... workers are forced to sign a statement acknowledging that they will be terminated from employment if they engage in any form of union organizing activity which includes signing a union card.
As the world is about to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 2008--- each and everyone of the rights articulated in this important Declaration are being denied over two-million workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry.
Many of these workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry are people of color which raises the question of racism.
Many of these two-million workers are very young workers for whom this will be their first job under these atrocious working conditions, thus creating other obvious problems.
In addition, these casino managements are employing thousands of undocumented workers making for an even more complex situation. Imagine, if you will, working in a place of employment where even those around you have no rights!
I call to your attention that Amy Berglund, the Regional Assistant to United States Senator Carl Levin claims to know nothing about this disgraceful and shameful situation workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry even though, right under her nose, workers are being fired left and right by the Island Casino management.
I would also call to your attention that most of these casinos are managed by non-Native American firms such as the Fertitta's "Station Casinos." I trust you know the history of Frank Fertitta and his involvement in gaming. I doubt that you would want one of your own children growing up having to work for such an employer while being denied of all rights.
Perhaps we should get together to discuss these concerns. Two-million Americans being intentionally and systematically denied their human rights is no small matter; especially with the sensitivity across the globe there is to human rights issues. We hope that with your election these injustices will come to an end... this is the change casinos workers seek from your election.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me by e-mail or by letter--- U.S. Post.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Cc:
President Maggie Bird, Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm
David Bonior
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
Representative Keith Ellison, Minnesota
Minnesota State Representative Tom Rukavina
Minnesota State Senator David Tomassoni
Amy Berglund, Regional Representative for U.S. Senator Carl Levin
Elizabeth Reed, Staff Assistant, U.S. Senator Carl Levin
Guy Ryder, General Secretary, International Trade Union
Confederation
President Benjamin Todd Jealous, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541
E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net
Check out my blog:
Thoughts From Podunk
http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Workers Occupy Factory in struggle for their rights
"Republic Windows and Doors workers require the support of all working people. They fight for our rights as they fight for their own rights."
Maggie Bird
President,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Idled workers occupy factory in Chicago
By RUPA SHENOY, Associated Press Writer Rupa Shenoy, Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO – Workers laid off from their jobs at a factory have occupied the building and are demanding assurances they'll get severance and vacation pay that they say they are owed.
About 200 employees of Republic Windows and Doors began their sit-in Friday, the last scheduled day of the plant's operation.
Leah Fried, an organizer with the United Electrical Workers, said the Chicago-based vinyl window manufacturer failed to give 60 days' notice required by law before shutting down.
Workers also were angered when company officials didn't show up for a meeting Friday that had been arranged by U.S. Rep Luis Gutierrez, a Chicago Democrat, she said.
During the peaceful takeover, workers have been shoveling snow and cleaning the building, Fried said.
"We're doing something we haven't since the 1930s, so we're trying to make it work," Fried said.
Union officials said another meeting with the company is scheduled for Monday.
Representatives of Republic Windows did not immediately respond Saturday to calls and e-mails seeking comment.
Police spokeswoman Laura Kubiak said authorities were aware of the situation and officers were patrolling the area.
Crain's Chicago Business reported that the company's monthly sales had fallen to $2.9 million from $4 million during the past month. In a memo to the union, obtained by the business journal, Republic CEO Rich Gillman said the company had "no choice but to shut our doors."
Workers Occupy Factory
Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008
Incidences similar to this may soon be taking place across the United States. Seize the day, seize the hour, seize the means of production.
The workers of Republic Windows and Doors are right this minute occupying their factory, which was due to close at 10:00 AM this morning. The workers are fighting for pay for their lost vacation days and for the 75 days notice that they are guaranteed under Illinois law. This is the first time in many years workers have taken the bold, militant strategy of occupying their place of work to demand justice. The plan to occupy the plant until the hear the results of the next round of negotiations Monday afternoon. THEY NEED TO KNOW THEY HAVE OUR SUPPORT!!!
A rally has been planned for 12:00 Noon tomorrow.
Please attend.
BUT WE SHOULD ORGANIZE A CONSTANT PRESENCE OF COMMUNITY MEMBERS PICKETING OUTSIDE THE FACTORY! BRING FOOD AND COFFEE FOR THE WORKERS. It is our presence and the press that is the workers best defense against the police raiding the factory.
These workers are fighting for all of us!!! As the economic crisis deepens we need to launch a working class fight back.
These workers are the starting point and deserve our full support.
Go to…
Republic Windows & Doors
1333 N. Hickory
On Goose Island, near the intersection of Division & Clyborn
Chicago factory occupied
December 6, 2008
WORKERS OCCUPYING the Republic Windows & Doors factory slated for closure are vowing to remain in the Chicago plant until they win the $1.5 million in severance and vacation pay owed them by management.
In a tactic rarely used in the U.S. since the labor struggles of the 1930s, the workers, members of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) Local 1110, refused to leave the plant on December 5, its last scheduled day of operation.
"We decided to do it because this is money that belongs to us," said Maria Roman, who's worked at the plant for eight years. "These are our rights."
Word of the occupation spread quickly both among labor and immigrant rights activists--the overwhelming majority of the workers are Latinos. Seven local TV news stations showed up to do interviews and live reports, and a steady stream of activists arrived to bring donations of food and money and to plan solidarity actions.
Management claims that it can't continue operations because its main creditor, Bank of America (BoA), refuses to make any more loans to the company. After workers picketed BoA headquarters December 3, bank officials agreed to sit down with Republic management and UE to discuss the matter at a December 5 meeting arranged by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill), said UE organizer Leah Fried.
BoA had said that it couldn't discuss the matter with the union directly without written approval from Republic's management. But Republic representatives failed to show up at the meeting, and plant managers prepared to close the doors for good--violating the federal WARN Act that requires 60 days notice of a plant closure.
The workers decided this couldn't go unchallenged. "The company and Bank of America are throwing the ball to one another, and we're in the middle," said Vicente Rangel, a shop steward and former vice president of Local 1110.
Many workers had suspected the company was planning to go out of business--and perhaps restart operations elsewhere. Several said managers had removed both production and office equipment in recent days.
Furthermore, while inventory records indicated there were plenty of parts in the plant, workers on the production line found shortages. And the order books, while certainly down from the peak years of the housing boom, didn't square with management's claims of a total collapse. "Where did all those windows go?" one worker asked.
Workers were especially outraged that Bank of America, which recently received a bailout in taxpayer money, won't provide credit to Republic. "They get $25 billion from the government, and won't loan a few million to this company so workers can keep their jobs?" said Ricardo Caceres, who has worked at the plant for six years.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE MEMBERS of Local 1110 have a history of struggle. In 2004, they decertified the Central States Joint Board--a union notorious for corruption and sweetheart contracts with management--and brought in UE, a far more democratic organization.
In May of this year, Local 1110 mobilized for a contract by organizing a "practice" picket, and 70 workers used their lunch break to confront the boss with a petition listing their demands. The workers were able to turn back company's effort to win major concessions and won solid pay increases.Now, management is trying to get revenge by pocketing money that belongs to the workers.
UE officials and workers acknowledge that it will be difficult to stop the plant from closing. But they're determined to get the money owed to them--and they believe that by fighting, they can set an example for other workers facing layoffs and plant closures as the recession deepens.
Negotiations are set for Monday, December 8. Whatever happens, however, the workers have already sent a message to employers that if they violate workers rights and the law, they can expect a fight.
"This is a message to the workers of America," said Vicente Rangel, the shop steward. "If we stand together, we will prevail until justice is done, and we get what we're due."
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
What you can do
If you live in the Chicago area, come to a rally on Saturday, December 6, at 12 Noon at Republic Windows, 1333 N. Hickory in Chicago, on Goose Island.
If negotiations with Bank of America fail to resolve the issue, there will be a picket of BoA's Chicago headquarters at 231 S. LaSalle on Tuesday, December 9 at 12 noon.
Members of Local 1110 need your support.
Make checks payable to the UE Local 1110 Solidarity Fund, and mail to:
37 S. Ashland, Chicago, IL 60607.
Messages of support can be sent to leahfried@gmail.com.
For more information, call UE at 312-829-8300.
At the Jobs with Justice Web site, you can send a message of protest to Bank of America (http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/bankofamerica/).
Workers occupy factory in Chicago
PWW newspaper
CHICAGO — Workers at Republic Windows and Doors in the Goose Island neighborhood began occupying the plant Friday morning Dec. 5 to regain pay for lost vacation days after the plant was abruptly closed.
They plan to continue the occupation until the results of the next round of negotiations with management on Dec. 8 are known.
Bank of America (BA) is chief investor and controls the day-to-day finances of Republic Windows and Doors, a manufacturer for the home construction market. BA refused to extend a line of credit and as a result the company was forced to close its doors December 5. Three hundred workers were thrown onto the street. This action came on the heels of a $25 billion emergency bailout of BA from the federal government.
On Dec. 3 100 Republic Windows workers, their families and supporters picketed BA Chicago headquarters on LaSalle Street. The workers, represented by United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) stretched a city block as they marched beneath the ornate bank columns and carried signs saying, “Billions for BA, $0 for workers” and “You got your bailout, we got sold out.”
According to Armando Robles, a maintenance employee and local union president, “Just weeks before Christmas we are told our factory will close in three days. Taxpayers gave Bank of America billions and they turn around and close our company. We will fight for a bailout for workers.”
The mostly Latino and African American workers are demanding at a minimum, the bank allow the company to pay worker vacation pay and other monies owned under WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act). BA instructed the company not to issue payments. In addition, the union is demanding the company comply with the requirement to give 60 days notice before closure of a workplace or 60 days pay in lieu of notice.
But the union believes the jobs can be saved. The company has said the closure is due to the deepening economic crisis and especially in the housing and construction industry. Orders have plummeted and according to the company, declining revenues would have ended in bankruptcy.
But according to a UE spokesperson, while the company’s new construction sales have suffered due to the slowdown, sales of replacement windows have remained steady. CEO Rich Gillman had just told the union that they company had customers willing to buy windows and they could stay in business if BA continued financing.
Observers say BA’s callousness is a clear example of the need for greater regulation of the bailouts being extended to Wall Street banks to prevent such outrageous acts of abuse.
Supporters can join a vigil Dec. 6 at noon and show their support for the workers by going to:
Republic Windows & Doors
1333 N. Hickory
On Goose Island,
near the intersection of Division & Clyborn.
Contact UE: ue@ranknfile-ue.org
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008480710_chicago08.html
Laid-off workers continue to occupy Chicago factory
Workers laid off Friday from Republic Windows and Doors, who for years
assembled vinyl windows and sliding doors here, said they would not leave,
even after company officials announced the factory was closing.
CHICAGO — The scene inside a long, low-slung factory on this city's North
Side this weekend offered a glimpse at how the nation's loss of more than
600,000 manufacturing jobs in a year of recession is boiling over.
Workers laid off Friday from Republic Windows and Doors, who for years
assembled vinyl windows and sliding doors here, said they would not leave,
even after company officials announced the factory was closing.
Some of the plant's 250 workers stayed all weekend in what they were
calling an occupation of the factory. Their sharpest criticisms were aimed
at their former bosses, who they said gave them only three days' notice of
the closure, and the company's creditors.
But their anger extended to the government's costly corporate bailout
plans, which, they argued, had forgotten about regular workers.
"They want the poor person to stay down," said Silvia Mazon, 47, a mother
of two who worked as an assembler here for 13 years and said she had never
before been the sort to make a fuss.
"We're here and we're not going anywhere until we get what's fair and
what's ours. They thought they would get rid of us easily, but if we have
to be here for Christmas, it doesn't matter."
The workers, members of Local 1110 of the United Electrical, Radio and
Machine Workers of America, said they were owed vacation and severance pay
and did not receive the 60 days' notice of layoffs generally required by
federal law.
The workers voted Friday afternoon to stage the sit-in. Company officials,
who were no longer at the factory, did not return telephone or e-mail
messages. A meeting between the owners and workers was scheduled for today.
The workers' plight drew sympathy and support from President-elect Obama
and community leaders Sunday who called it a symbol of the nation's
financial disarray.
"I think that these workers, if they have earned these benefits and their
pay, then these companies need to follow through on those commitments,"
Obama said at a news conference elsewhere in Chicago.
The company, founded in 1965, once employed more than 700 people but had
struggled in recent months as home construction dipped, workers said.
Still, as they milled around the factory's entrance this weekend, some
workers said they doubted the company was really in financial straits, and
they suggested it would reopen elsewhere with cheaper costs and lower pay.
advertising
Others said managers had kept their struggles secret, at one point before
Thanksgiving removing heavy equipment in the middle of the night but
claiming, when asked about it, that all was well.
Workers also pointedly blamed Bank of America, a lender to Republic
Windows, saying the bank had prevented the company from paying them what
they were owed, particularly for vacation time accrued.
"Here the banks like Bank of America get a bailout, but workers cannot be
paid?" said Leah Fried, an organizer with the union workers. "The taxpayers
would like to see that bailout go toward saving jobs, not saving CEOs."
In a statement issued Saturday, Bank of America officials said they could
not comment on an individual client's situation because of confidentiality
obligations.
Still, a spokeswoman also said, "Neither Bank of America nor any other
third-party lender to the company has the right to control whether the
company complies with applicable laws or honors its commitments to its
employees."
Inside the factory, the "occupation" was relatively quiet. Chicago police
said they were monitoring the situation but had no reports of a criminal
matter to investigate. About 30 workers sat in folding chairs. They came in
shifts around the clock. They tidied things. They shoveled snow. They met
with visiting leaders, including U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from
Chicago, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who brought turkeys and groceries to
them Sunday.
Throughout the weekend, people came with donations of food, water and other
supplies.
Many employees said they had worked in the factory for decades. Lalo Munoz
said he arrived 34 years ago.
The workers — about 80 percent of them Hispanic, with the rest black or
of other ethnic and national backgrounds — made $14 an hour on average
and received health-care and retirement benefits, Fried said.
The workers said they were determined to keep their action — reminiscent,
union leaders said, of autoworkers' efforts in Michigan in the 1930s —
peaceful and to preserve the factory and its equipment.
"The fact is that workers really feel like they have nothing to lose at
this point," Fried said.
"It shows something about our economic times and it says something about
how people feel about the bailout."
Friday, December 5, 2008
Save the Jeep, Save the Nation
Save the Jeep, Save the Nation
By Leo Gerard
December 5th, 2008 - 12:15pm ET
In 1941, car manufacturer Willys-Overland demonstrated the strength and sturdiness of its new Army scout vehicle — the Jeep — to Congress by driving it up the U.S. Capitol steps.
Invented and manufactured in the USA, the Jeep would become an icon of American ingenuity, durability and mechanical ability. Soldiers loved the lithe little vehicle for its uncanny capacity to go anywhere. The New York Museum of Modern Art would exhibit it in 2002 and describe it as a masterpiece of functional design. Now it’s 58 and constructed by United Auto Workers for Chrysler in Toledo, Ohio.
Disregarding Jeep’s help in securing this country against fascists, conservatives like former Republican Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney are calling for its execution. Romney and his conservative compatriots want Congress to deny Chrysler, GM and Ford federal loans so that the Big Three go bankrupt. Using false wage information, these conservatives have persuaded the public that auto workers are overpaid. That has resulted in polls showing 61 percent of Americans oppose aid to the Big Three. And now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is saying he fears he can’t muster the votes necessary for a loan.
Congress cannot let the Jeep die in bankruptcy. Congress must not fail the U.S. auto industry. Doing so would be abandoning the core of the American economy — manufacturing. America is not built on Wall Street’s credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. Its wealth and culture are built on and built by middle class workers who construct actual products like steel beams, tires and Jeeps, who operate and repair machines that pull oil and coal out of the ground, who log trees and man the mills that convert them into paper.
Just after the end of World War II, when the Jeep first became a civilian vehicle, 35 percent of workers belonged to labor unions. That’s significant because union members earn 30 percent higher wages than non-union workers and are 59 percent more likely to have health insurance. Those better wages and benefits helped create the great middle class in America. Workers earned enough money to buy refrigerators and homes and cars and, later, college educations for their children. The money they earned and spent churned through the economy and kept it humming.
But over the next half century, union membership declined. So it is only about 12 percent now. Business and industry groups intent on the extinction of unions can claim credit for a good part of that. These are the same organizations that are today misleading the public about auto worker wages, claiming they make $70 an hour when it’s really $28. They’re the same ones advocating auto company bankruptcy because it would allow the Big Three to renege on their contractual promises to workers and to retirees. They criticize auto workers for making a decent living, $28 an hour plus health benefits and a pension. And they denigrate the companies for being decent corporate citizens and fulfilling their health care and pension promises to retirees.
Over the past half century, multinational corporations have shipped a significant number of those good-paying union jobs overseas. With the help of wrong-headed federal policy that encouraged it, the U.S. lost an average of 12,000 manufacturing jobs per month since 1980. Since May this year, the average has been nearly 60,000. Multinational corporations sought cheap labor and lax environmental regulations in places like China and Indonesia, in what has become an international wage race to the bottom. Americans supposedly benefit from the import of cheap goods. But unemployed workers can’t afford to buy them.
Along with the decline in jobs and union membership came a reduction in the rate of personal savings and an increase in household debt. The financial situation of the typical American family became increasingly precarious even as, over the past 25 years, the very richest one tenth of one percent accrued more and more wealth. These were the kind of guys involved in short-selling — a practice through which a person owns nothing but makes money by betting that a stock will lose value — and by selling sub-prime mortgage-backed securities. These were the kind of know-it-all Wall Street risk takers who gave themselves $30 billion in bonuses last Christmas.
You know what happened next. Three months after those bonuses the initial investment bank fell. Bear Stearns got the first big federal bailout in March. Then other financial institutions and a gigantic insurance company involved in the subprime speculation toppled: AIG, Washington Mutual, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Lehman Brothers. Congress quickly offered up $700 billion to save financial institutions, and giant Citigroup took $25 billion of that in October and another $20 billion in November trying to stave off bankruptcy.
Congress used taxpayer dollars — working people’s money — to save those year-end-bonus awardees on Wall Street. Then it stiffed the working stiff. So far, there’s been talk, but no actual help for millions facing foreclosure. And while unemployment is rising, Congress is dithering over the Big Three’s request for a loan that could save millions of auto worker and support industry jobs.
Unemployment increased to 6.5 percent in October, after nearly a quarter million people got thrown out of work in just those 31 days. Over the past 12 months, 2.8 million people lost their jobs. And finally, what every one of them already knew was officially declared earlier this week — the country has been in a recession for a year.
This nation clearly can’t survive on what is produced by Wall Street — reckless speculation. That took America down.
This country should not be spending all of its financial resources salvaging those who destroyed the economy. America needs to invest in what works — its people. Congress must provide mortgage relief. But, most urgently, it’s crucial that we re-invigorate our manufacturing base. America must be able to actually produce products. Swapping paper is not enough to sustain a strong and stable middle class that will save money and buy cars and homes.
The Jeep helped us win World War II. What has Wall Street actually done for you? Saving the Jeep — and Chrysler, GM and Ford — would be a symbol that America understands manufacturing is key to a strong economy and financially brawny workers.
Jeep owners should let Congress know they’re prepared to drive up the Capitol steps to support loans for the Big Three and investment in American manufacturing.
By Leo Gerard
December 5th, 2008 - 12:15pm ET
In 1941, car manufacturer Willys-Overland demonstrated the strength and sturdiness of its new Army scout vehicle — the Jeep — to Congress by driving it up the U.S. Capitol steps.
Invented and manufactured in the USA, the Jeep would become an icon of American ingenuity, durability and mechanical ability. Soldiers loved the lithe little vehicle for its uncanny capacity to go anywhere. The New York Museum of Modern Art would exhibit it in 2002 and describe it as a masterpiece of functional design. Now it’s 58 and constructed by United Auto Workers for Chrysler in Toledo, Ohio.
Disregarding Jeep’s help in securing this country against fascists, conservatives like former Republican Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney are calling for its execution. Romney and his conservative compatriots want Congress to deny Chrysler, GM and Ford federal loans so that the Big Three go bankrupt. Using false wage information, these conservatives have persuaded the public that auto workers are overpaid. That has resulted in polls showing 61 percent of Americans oppose aid to the Big Three. And now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is saying he fears he can’t muster the votes necessary for a loan.
Congress cannot let the Jeep die in bankruptcy. Congress must not fail the U.S. auto industry. Doing so would be abandoning the core of the American economy — manufacturing. America is not built on Wall Street’s credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. Its wealth and culture are built on and built by middle class workers who construct actual products like steel beams, tires and Jeeps, who operate and repair machines that pull oil and coal out of the ground, who log trees and man the mills that convert them into paper.
Just after the end of World War II, when the Jeep first became a civilian vehicle, 35 percent of workers belonged to labor unions. That’s significant because union members earn 30 percent higher wages than non-union workers and are 59 percent more likely to have health insurance. Those better wages and benefits helped create the great middle class in America. Workers earned enough money to buy refrigerators and homes and cars and, later, college educations for their children. The money they earned and spent churned through the economy and kept it humming.
But over the next half century, union membership declined. So it is only about 12 percent now. Business and industry groups intent on the extinction of unions can claim credit for a good part of that. These are the same organizations that are today misleading the public about auto worker wages, claiming they make $70 an hour when it’s really $28. They’re the same ones advocating auto company bankruptcy because it would allow the Big Three to renege on their contractual promises to workers and to retirees. They criticize auto workers for making a decent living, $28 an hour plus health benefits and a pension. And they denigrate the companies for being decent corporate citizens and fulfilling their health care and pension promises to retirees.
Over the past half century, multinational corporations have shipped a significant number of those good-paying union jobs overseas. With the help of wrong-headed federal policy that encouraged it, the U.S. lost an average of 12,000 manufacturing jobs per month since 1980. Since May this year, the average has been nearly 60,000. Multinational corporations sought cheap labor and lax environmental regulations in places like China and Indonesia, in what has become an international wage race to the bottom. Americans supposedly benefit from the import of cheap goods. But unemployed workers can’t afford to buy them.
Along with the decline in jobs and union membership came a reduction in the rate of personal savings and an increase in household debt. The financial situation of the typical American family became increasingly precarious even as, over the past 25 years, the very richest one tenth of one percent accrued more and more wealth. These were the kind of guys involved in short-selling — a practice through which a person owns nothing but makes money by betting that a stock will lose value — and by selling sub-prime mortgage-backed securities. These were the kind of know-it-all Wall Street risk takers who gave themselves $30 billion in bonuses last Christmas.
You know what happened next. Three months after those bonuses the initial investment bank fell. Bear Stearns got the first big federal bailout in March. Then other financial institutions and a gigantic insurance company involved in the subprime speculation toppled: AIG, Washington Mutual, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Lehman Brothers. Congress quickly offered up $700 billion to save financial institutions, and giant Citigroup took $25 billion of that in October and another $20 billion in November trying to stave off bankruptcy.
Congress used taxpayer dollars — working people’s money — to save those year-end-bonus awardees on Wall Street. Then it stiffed the working stiff. So far, there’s been talk, but no actual help for millions facing foreclosure. And while unemployment is rising, Congress is dithering over the Big Three’s request for a loan that could save millions of auto worker and support industry jobs.
Unemployment increased to 6.5 percent in October, after nearly a quarter million people got thrown out of work in just those 31 days. Over the past 12 months, 2.8 million people lost their jobs. And finally, what every one of them already knew was officially declared earlier this week — the country has been in a recession for a year.
This nation clearly can’t survive on what is produced by Wall Street — reckless speculation. That took America down.
This country should not be spending all of its financial resources salvaging those who destroyed the economy. America needs to invest in what works — its people. Congress must provide mortgage relief. But, most urgently, it’s crucial that we re-invigorate our manufacturing base. America must be able to actually produce products. Swapping paper is not enough to sustain a strong and stable middle class that will save money and buy cars and homes.
The Jeep helped us win World War II. What has Wall Street actually done for you? Saving the Jeep — and Chrysler, GM and Ford — would be a symbol that America understands manufacturing is key to a strong economy and financially brawny workers.
Jeep owners should let Congress know they’re prepared to drive up the Capitol steps to support loans for the Big Three and investment in American manufacturing.
Response from Alan Maki:
Tax-payers can buy up the entire auto industry for a real bargain--- much less than the cost of a bailout that will most likely end up with an auto industry in collapse like the capitalist system itself; why should tax-payers subsidize what they are not going to own?
The "free marketers" are always complaining about school children getting free lunches and now these same capitalist soothsayers are telling us we need to bailout the auto industry as politicians treat these Big Three CEO's to free lunches on us wen they come begging for a bailout.
I say let these greedy pigs go down and we can pick up the plants and equipment for a real bargain.
With a nationalized auto industry we can put even more people back to work building environmentally friendly transportation which will help us solve the problem of global warming.
Where were you when progressive Minnesota legislators came up with a plan to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant?
We now need federal legislation modeled after Minnesota S.F. 607 which would keep all the components of an industrial manufacturing plant intact until it can be figured out how to put it back into operation.
I don't see any city, county, state or federal government employees or teachers complaining they get their pay checks from the government; I don't think auto workers would mind either. If a few do, so what, let them go find someplace else to work--- there are plenty of people who would be thrilled to be working in a publicly owned nationalized automobile industry.
Liberalism's Long Goodbye
This is an interesting response to George McGovern's recent attacks on organized labor. What has motivated McGovern to express such views is hard to say. Jerry Tucker does a reasonably good job in taking McGovern to task.
However, Tucker's own positions could use a little critiquing,too.
Tucker has, himself, been slow to come around to the realities of the class struggle.
For instance, a couple years ago he spoke to a gathering of working class studies teachers, instructors and professors in St. Paul, Minnesota and didn't even have the courage to comment on the closing of the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant only a short distance from McCallester College where he was part of a labor panel.
This really isn't much different from what Tucker criticizes George McGovern for. Tucker was also speaking in a state where more than thirty-thousand Minnesotans go to work in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws... again, silence from Tucker, who, as a matter of fact was sitting on the UAW's International Board at the time the "Compacts" creating the Indian Gaming Industry were brought into existence for the express purpose of creating right-to-work-for-less without-any-rights colonies all across this country. Tucker turned his back and covered his ears and closed his eyes as this most disgraceful injustice occurred which gave a great deal of confidence to corporate America that the time was ripe to attack organized labor, an attack that Tucker now decries. But, still today, while helping to create the Center for Labor Renewal, not only does Jerry Tucker remain silent concerning the plight of some two-million casino workers employed in more than 450 casinos strung out across this country, so to does each of those whose names adorn the Center for Labor Renewal's website.
Apparently Jerry Tucker's brand of social democracy is also taking its good old time to exit the scene along with the "liberalism" he decries.
I bring this up not to rub Jerry Tucker's or anyone else's nose in the pile of shit they helped to create that has enabled Barack Obama to pass himself off, not only as a "liberal" but as a "progressive."
In the final analysis what really needs to be asked is what has happened to, "An injury to one is an injury to all" in the U.S. labor movement?
Tucker's own Center for Labor Renewal has not only missed the boat as he did years ago as these draconian "Compacts" were being brought into existence by the very Democratic Party politicians Tucker supported at the time; but, the Center for Labor Renewal and Tucker, is once again, is missing the boat on another issue, this time a problem plaguing his own industry--- auto--- by refusing to consider nationalization and public ownership as the only way to really defend the rights of auto workers that it has taken some ten decades--- one-hundred years--- to win as most of those rights are set to be taken away by the very same politicians who approve each and every "Compact" creating new casinos.
So, there is more than a little irony in Tucker's own thinking towards his (and my) old friend George McGovern.
Another way of looking at this is that a political system of which Tucker was an integral part of a major player has come back to haunt him and has taken a big bite out of his own ass... something Jerry Tucker may want to consider as he remains silent regarding the present destruction of the UAW now underway that will bring auto workers pretty much down to the level of--- surprise! surprise!--- casino workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry... and, Michigan's Governor, Jennifer Granholm--- backed to the hilt by the UAW, has told workers at the General Motors Stamping Plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan which is closing, that because she signed another one of these dirty, draconian "Compacts" creating the Gun Lake Casino a few miles down the road from this plant, these auto workers will still have jobs!
Jerry Tucker might want to study up on the political views held by the founders of the United Auto Worker's Union... those like William Z. Foster, Earl Browder, Wyndham Mortimer, Bud Simons, Bob Travis, Phil Raymond, Nadia Barkan and Leon Sompolinsky. It wouldn't hurt for Tucker's buddy Gregg Shotwell to learn a little real history about his union, too.
Anyways, Jerry Tucker's response to George McGovern makes for some interesting reading--- keeping in mind there is more than a enough hypocrisy to go around as casino workers know all so well.
In fact, Jerry Tucker might want to give Nadine Nosal a call and find out what the score is on the Gun Lake Casino Compact now held up in the Michigan legislature for over a year... after all, it might not take much more than some action coming from the Center for Labor Renewal to get this "Compact" sent back to Governor Granholm and the Gun Lake Band for renegotiation for the rights of casino workers to be protected... and this would be protecting the rights of auto workers now losing their jobs to the closing of the GM Stamping Plant in Grand Rapids who will for sure be among the 2,000 Gun Lake Casino workers.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Liberalism's Long Goodbye
By: Jerry Tucker
(published in mrzine.monthlyreview.org)
by Jerry Tucker
Former Senator and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern's recent commentary on labor "The End of 'More'" (Los Angeles Times, 22 May 2006), albeit apologetically, confirms that liberal orthodoxy is on the side of telling U.S. workers and working-class communities to quit struggling against the tide of "a new competitive reality." But whose reality is it? Telling workers that they are asking for too much without a corresponding analysis of the increasing inequity of wealth division in this country further debunks the myth that the United States doesn't have a class system.
As someone who in 1972 co-chaired a state labor committee for McGovern's presidential candidacy (while the AFL-CIO's George Meany withheld support) and in the late 1970s called on him in his Senate office to affirm support for key labor and social issues, I can think of many public figures more in need of criticism than George McGovern, but the distorted conclusion of his commentary leave little choice.
It's too bad that a man of McGovern's acknowledged compassion, history of dissent against reckless imperialism, and championship of worker rights feels obligated to help hoist American liberalism's flag of surrender to global capital. It has become the typical response of liberal Democrats and most U.S. labor leaders, when they come up against corporate America's definition of "reality," not to challenge it but to adjust to it.
Victims of today's relentless corporate assault, such as Delphi workers, will find it hard to forgive the former Senator for his misrepresentation of the historical definition of "more." That call for "more" -- actually issued by AFL President Samuel Gompers, not John L. Lewis to whom McGovern attributes it -- not only spoke to "more" wages, but also "more" education, healthcare, access to leisure and culture. It was about the quality of life for workers, what today's robber barons clearly view as a removable obstacle on their path to unfettered wealth accumulation.
For workers, the dog-eat-dog, race-to-the-bottom economic model now being touted as the "new competitive reality" has all the social validity of a epidemic for which only the elite have access to a vaccine. The shakeouts in the domestic auto industry are only the latest in a continuous pattern of corporate restructuring -- i.e. ongoing, neo-liberal attacks on workers -- which now features refashioned bankruptcy laws to eliminate gains won through collective bargaining. Indeed, reckless corporate bankruptcy filings have been turned into Damoclesian Swords over workers and communities.
For a generation now, workers have been asked to make sacrifices to gain security in a better future that never comes. Corporations on the other hand have gotten pretty much everything they've asked. Isn't it about time that we have a national discussion on the amazing disconnect between the remarkable economic success of the American economy we hear so much about and the argument -- reiterated by McGovern in his op-ed -- that workers must lower their expectations? The corporations have gotten what they asked for and haven't delivered. Isn't it their credibility that we should be focusing on, rather than criticizing workers for trying to hang on to what they have? What is it about our society -- about how power is allocated and priorities set in it -- that has made technology a threat to our wellbeing instead of a liberating force?
Liberals have long since abandoned their supposed "core principle" of justice and equality as they continue to ignore rising economic injustice and inequality. Guided by what Wall Street wants, not the very real needs of a majority of working Americans, they are left to shill for the companies and the system that enriches them by appealing to workers to be "more realistic."
The new "realism" leaves out the fact that "US companies have increased their share of the economic pie at a faster rate over the past five years than at any time since the Second World War. Recent government figures show that profits from current production as a share of national income have risen from 7 per cent in mid-2001 to 12.2 per cent at the start of this year. This rate of growth is unprecedented since collection of these figures began in 1947" (Financial Times, 4 June 2006). To the millions of workers being asked to sacrifice to accommodate this new "realism," it seems that compassionate conservatism and conservative liberalism are increasingly offering the same fake medicine.
While the former Senator restates his support for a universal health care plan, he offers it as a "supplement to income" that may help bring down the wages of workers he has already characterized as too high, more as "a way of relieving hard-pressed businesses" than as a way of lifting the catastrophic burden on the millions of uninsured and underinsured in and out of U.S. workplaces.
McGovrn labels the union leaders who openly accept the conclusion of his commentary "progressive." But the opinion that carries the most weight on the conduct and effectiveness of politically insulated national union leaders belongs to the dues-paying members of their unions. By a wide margin, workers faced with incessant concession demands want a labor movement that aggregates its power to repel attacks on their hard-won gains and fights for greater social distribution of those gains. Labor leaders calling for partnership with a corporate elite presiding over a new era of "wealth accumulation by dispossession" are regarded by those workers not as progressives but as accomplices.
Ironically, the former Senator bemoans "union leaders who still see American businesses as the enemy," but it's the workers, not union leaders, who have come to see businesses as the enemy . . . and with good cause. Workers also see the evidence of corporate control of government, which expropriates their rights under the joint domination of the corporate and political elites, supported by both national political parties, including the liberal wing of the Democrats.
Equally ironic is the gentle defense that Wal Mart-ism, if not the company itself, gets in McGovern's plea for worker realism and consignment to "less." Essentially, McGovern is telling us that the Democratic Party, on their best day, has nothing to offer.
Despite what the corporate and political elites, and much of the labor leadership, are telling us about the need to accept the "new competitive reality," acceptance of its legitimacy, for the U.S. working class, is acceptance of a downward economic spiral from which there is no recovery. What workers -- union and non-union, immigrant and native-born alike -- really need, instead, is resistance and the renewal of those collective institutions delegated by history to outfit the struggle for social and economic justice -- a class struggle-based labor movement and a political party representing the interests of workers, not the interest of the bosses.
To any extent McGovern is right, his logic suggests a quite different conclusion than asking for "less." If this is the best American capitalism has to offer, maybe it's the system, not workers' expectations, that has to be changed?
---
Jerry Tucker is a former Intl UAW Executive Board Member and is an Initiating Co-convenor of the new national Center for Labor Renewal.
Post a Comment About this Article.
However, Tucker's own positions could use a little critiquing,too.
Tucker has, himself, been slow to come around to the realities of the class struggle.
For instance, a couple years ago he spoke to a gathering of working class studies teachers, instructors and professors in St. Paul, Minnesota and didn't even have the courage to comment on the closing of the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant only a short distance from McCallester College where he was part of a labor panel.
This really isn't much different from what Tucker criticizes George McGovern for. Tucker was also speaking in a state where more than thirty-thousand Minnesotans go to work in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws... again, silence from Tucker, who, as a matter of fact was sitting on the UAW's International Board at the time the "Compacts" creating the Indian Gaming Industry were brought into existence for the express purpose of creating right-to-work-for-less without-any-rights colonies all across this country. Tucker turned his back and covered his ears and closed his eyes as this most disgraceful injustice occurred which gave a great deal of confidence to corporate America that the time was ripe to attack organized labor, an attack that Tucker now decries. But, still today, while helping to create the Center for Labor Renewal, not only does Jerry Tucker remain silent concerning the plight of some two-million casino workers employed in more than 450 casinos strung out across this country, so to does each of those whose names adorn the Center for Labor Renewal's website.
Apparently Jerry Tucker's brand of social democracy is also taking its good old time to exit the scene along with the "liberalism" he decries.
I bring this up not to rub Jerry Tucker's or anyone else's nose in the pile of shit they helped to create that has enabled Barack Obama to pass himself off, not only as a "liberal" but as a "progressive."
In the final analysis what really needs to be asked is what has happened to, "An injury to one is an injury to all" in the U.S. labor movement?
Tucker's own Center for Labor Renewal has not only missed the boat as he did years ago as these draconian "Compacts" were being brought into existence by the very Democratic Party politicians Tucker supported at the time; but, the Center for Labor Renewal and Tucker, is once again, is missing the boat on another issue, this time a problem plaguing his own industry--- auto--- by refusing to consider nationalization and public ownership as the only way to really defend the rights of auto workers that it has taken some ten decades--- one-hundred years--- to win as most of those rights are set to be taken away by the very same politicians who approve each and every "Compact" creating new casinos.
So, there is more than a little irony in Tucker's own thinking towards his (and my) old friend George McGovern.
Another way of looking at this is that a political system of which Tucker was an integral part of a major player has come back to haunt him and has taken a big bite out of his own ass... something Jerry Tucker may want to consider as he remains silent regarding the present destruction of the UAW now underway that will bring auto workers pretty much down to the level of--- surprise! surprise!--- casino workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry... and, Michigan's Governor, Jennifer Granholm--- backed to the hilt by the UAW, has told workers at the General Motors Stamping Plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan which is closing, that because she signed another one of these dirty, draconian "Compacts" creating the Gun Lake Casino a few miles down the road from this plant, these auto workers will still have jobs!
Jerry Tucker might want to study up on the political views held by the founders of the United Auto Worker's Union... those like William Z. Foster, Earl Browder, Wyndham Mortimer, Bud Simons, Bob Travis, Phil Raymond, Nadia Barkan and Leon Sompolinsky. It wouldn't hurt for Tucker's buddy Gregg Shotwell to learn a little real history about his union, too.
Anyways, Jerry Tucker's response to George McGovern makes for some interesting reading--- keeping in mind there is more than a enough hypocrisy to go around as casino workers know all so well.
In fact, Jerry Tucker might want to give Nadine Nosal a call and find out what the score is on the Gun Lake Casino Compact now held up in the Michigan legislature for over a year... after all, it might not take much more than some action coming from the Center for Labor Renewal to get this "Compact" sent back to Governor Granholm and the Gun Lake Band for renegotiation for the rights of casino workers to be protected... and this would be protecting the rights of auto workers now losing their jobs to the closing of the GM Stamping Plant in Grand Rapids who will for sure be among the 2,000 Gun Lake Casino workers.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Liberalism's Long Goodbye
By: Jerry Tucker
(published in mrzine.monthlyreview.org)
by Jerry Tucker
Former Senator and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern's recent commentary on labor "The End of 'More'" (Los Angeles Times, 22 May 2006), albeit apologetically, confirms that liberal orthodoxy is on the side of telling U.S. workers and working-class communities to quit struggling against the tide of "a new competitive reality." But whose reality is it? Telling workers that they are asking for too much without a corresponding analysis of the increasing inequity of wealth division in this country further debunks the myth that the United States doesn't have a class system.
As someone who in 1972 co-chaired a state labor committee for McGovern's presidential candidacy (while the AFL-CIO's George Meany withheld support) and in the late 1970s called on him in his Senate office to affirm support for key labor and social issues, I can think of many public figures more in need of criticism than George McGovern, but the distorted conclusion of his commentary leave little choice.
It's too bad that a man of McGovern's acknowledged compassion, history of dissent against reckless imperialism, and championship of worker rights feels obligated to help hoist American liberalism's flag of surrender to global capital. It has become the typical response of liberal Democrats and most U.S. labor leaders, when they come up against corporate America's definition of "reality," not to challenge it but to adjust to it.
Victims of today's relentless corporate assault, such as Delphi workers, will find it hard to forgive the former Senator for his misrepresentation of the historical definition of "more." That call for "more" -- actually issued by AFL President Samuel Gompers, not John L. Lewis to whom McGovern attributes it -- not only spoke to "more" wages, but also "more" education, healthcare, access to leisure and culture. It was about the quality of life for workers, what today's robber barons clearly view as a removable obstacle on their path to unfettered wealth accumulation.
For workers, the dog-eat-dog, race-to-the-bottom economic model now being touted as the "new competitive reality" has all the social validity of a epidemic for which only the elite have access to a vaccine. The shakeouts in the domestic auto industry are only the latest in a continuous pattern of corporate restructuring -- i.e. ongoing, neo-liberal attacks on workers -- which now features refashioned bankruptcy laws to eliminate gains won through collective bargaining. Indeed, reckless corporate bankruptcy filings have been turned into Damoclesian Swords over workers and communities.
For a generation now, workers have been asked to make sacrifices to gain security in a better future that never comes. Corporations on the other hand have gotten pretty much everything they've asked. Isn't it about time that we have a national discussion on the amazing disconnect between the remarkable economic success of the American economy we hear so much about and the argument -- reiterated by McGovern in his op-ed -- that workers must lower their expectations? The corporations have gotten what they asked for and haven't delivered. Isn't it their credibility that we should be focusing on, rather than criticizing workers for trying to hang on to what they have? What is it about our society -- about how power is allocated and priorities set in it -- that has made technology a threat to our wellbeing instead of a liberating force?
Liberals have long since abandoned their supposed "core principle" of justice and equality as they continue to ignore rising economic injustice and inequality. Guided by what Wall Street wants, not the very real needs of a majority of working Americans, they are left to shill for the companies and the system that enriches them by appealing to workers to be "more realistic."
The new "realism" leaves out the fact that "US companies have increased their share of the economic pie at a faster rate over the past five years than at any time since the Second World War. Recent government figures show that profits from current production as a share of national income have risen from 7 per cent in mid-2001 to 12.2 per cent at the start of this year. This rate of growth is unprecedented since collection of these figures began in 1947" (Financial Times, 4 June 2006). To the millions of workers being asked to sacrifice to accommodate this new "realism," it seems that compassionate conservatism and conservative liberalism are increasingly offering the same fake medicine.
While the former Senator restates his support for a universal health care plan, he offers it as a "supplement to income" that may help bring down the wages of workers he has already characterized as too high, more as "a way of relieving hard-pressed businesses" than as a way of lifting the catastrophic burden on the millions of uninsured and underinsured in and out of U.S. workplaces.
McGovrn labels the union leaders who openly accept the conclusion of his commentary "progressive." But the opinion that carries the most weight on the conduct and effectiveness of politically insulated national union leaders belongs to the dues-paying members of their unions. By a wide margin, workers faced with incessant concession demands want a labor movement that aggregates its power to repel attacks on their hard-won gains and fights for greater social distribution of those gains. Labor leaders calling for partnership with a corporate elite presiding over a new era of "wealth accumulation by dispossession" are regarded by those workers not as progressives but as accomplices.
Ironically, the former Senator bemoans "union leaders who still see American businesses as the enemy," but it's the workers, not union leaders, who have come to see businesses as the enemy . . . and with good cause. Workers also see the evidence of corporate control of government, which expropriates their rights under the joint domination of the corporate and political elites, supported by both national political parties, including the liberal wing of the Democrats.
Equally ironic is the gentle defense that Wal Mart-ism, if not the company itself, gets in McGovern's plea for worker realism and consignment to "less." Essentially, McGovern is telling us that the Democratic Party, on their best day, has nothing to offer.
Despite what the corporate and political elites, and much of the labor leadership, are telling us about the need to accept the "new competitive reality," acceptance of its legitimacy, for the U.S. working class, is acceptance of a downward economic spiral from which there is no recovery. What workers -- union and non-union, immigrant and native-born alike -- really need, instead, is resistance and the renewal of those collective institutions delegated by history to outfit the struggle for social and economic justice -- a class struggle-based labor movement and a political party representing the interests of workers, not the interest of the bosses.
To any extent McGovern is right, his logic suggests a quite different conclusion than asking for "less." If this is the best American capitalism has to offer, maybe it's the system, not workers' expectations, that has to be changed?
---
Jerry Tucker is a former Intl UAW Executive Board Member and is an Initiating Co-convenor of the new national Center for Labor Renewal.
Post a Comment About this Article.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Make way for the working class to have a say…
This enormous economic mess we are now experiencing, along with the heavy debt the bankers and the politicians of both major political parties have saddled us with, can be summed up very simply: The capitalists have taken all the profits and left the working class with all the problems.
There are only two sources of wealth: Labor and Mother Nature.
Anyone with an ounce of common sense understands that if you allow labor to be continually exploited and Mother Nature to be repeatedly abused and raped there will be severe consequences.
We are now reaping the consequences for allowing this parasitical monster of state-monopoly capitalism to have spun its web of corruption in the form of a cannibalistic military-financial-industrial complex which now threatens to consume and destroy our families, our communities, our State and our Nation while wreaking havoc in other lands.
Enough!
The time has come to put the needs of people before corporate profits.
There is only one alternative; for working people to come together to build a new society on the foundation created by the socialists of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party.
We need to fight and struggle to re-establish the liberal, democratic and progressive socialist traditions for which Minnesota is known around the world.
We have complex problems before us… but, any country which can spend trillions of dollars on wars to steal the oil of other nations, and trillions of dollars bailing out corporations and bankers looking for using socialism to solve the problems of their own creation as they have sought to prop up their rotten capitalist system--- which they have touted to the world as being the best--- at our expense… This Nation can now come up with the resources to use socialism to solve the problems for the rest of us, too.
What is good for the goose is, in this case, is even better for the gander.
Let Barack Obama and John McCain volunteer to go off exploring the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for Osama Bin Laden; we have better things to do.
Our first priority is to end these dirty wars for oil and redeploy those funds--- as we bring home the troops--- to creating a world class socialized health care system which will create millions of new jobs; five messes the money-grubbing Wall Street coupon clippers and their bought and paid for politicians created, all solved at the same time by ending these dirty imperialist wars for oil and regional domination--- we get health care not warfare, and we begin to solve the problem of unemployment--- and when we put people to work in this way we begin to create a new--- functioning--- people oriented, cooperative, socialist economy where democracy will flourish because it will require the full participation and involvement of all people working together in order to succeed.
Second, without further delay, we need to establish the State Bank of Minnesota to accomplish for our State what the State Bank of North Dakota was set up, by workers and farmers, to do--- fund enterprises to keep people working.
Third, we need a minimum wage which is a real living wage arrived at by the calculations of the United States Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics in cooperation with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development--- based upon the real figures relating to the real cost of living and this minimum wage should be required by legislation to be updated quarterly right along with the release of all economic indicators to assure a quality life and decent standard of living for all working people and their families.
We have finally come to the point where even the parasitic bankers and the exploiting industrialists now concede that only socialism can bail them out of this horrible mess and solve their problems... capitalism has reached the end of the line and the only thing now to be had from the system is unending human misery.
At the point where society has to pay to clean up the corrupt mess these parasitic predatory lenders and financial institutions have created, this is the time to say:
Enough!
What tax-payers finance, tax-payers must own.
If Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs do not like these terms, these greedy pigs should make the trip to their off-shore banks in the Cayman Islands and make withdrawals from their accounts to pay to solve their own problems.
The time has come to roll up our sleeves, come together, and get to work quickly before this entire rotten system collapses---like the I35-W Bridge--- and crushes us all while leaving our children and grandchildren with the clean-up and the bills.
I firmly believe working people can run our country and our state better than any of the big-business politicians being funded by the corporate lobbyists.
Effectively using the tools of public ownership and nationalization combined with modern, scientific planning for the common good, we can put people to work in decent jobs at real living wages... we hear it all the time just before Election Day: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs... but we never see the jobs, and if we do, these jobs are poverty wage jobs no one can live on.
I intend to run for Governor of Minnesota in 2010.
I invite all working people who think that it is possible to create something better than the mess we are now in, to come together and work from where socialist Governors Floyd B. Olson and Elmer A. Benson left off in trying to create a just and decent society where people live and work in harmony with Mother Nature, to join with me, in establishing the Minnesota Party to give the bankers, the mining, forestry and power generating industries along with the industrialists and big-agribusiness a real run for their money.
Let’s run these parasites that have been living off of our labor and destroying Mother Nature right out of our state. We can get along just fine--- even better--- without them.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
and
Candidate for Governor of Minnesota
Former member: Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party State Central Committee
There are only two sources of wealth: Labor and Mother Nature.
Anyone with an ounce of common sense understands that if you allow labor to be continually exploited and Mother Nature to be repeatedly abused and raped there will be severe consequences.
We are now reaping the consequences for allowing this parasitical monster of state-monopoly capitalism to have spun its web of corruption in the form of a cannibalistic military-financial-industrial complex which now threatens to consume and destroy our families, our communities, our State and our Nation while wreaking havoc in other lands.
Enough!
The time has come to put the needs of people before corporate profits.
There is only one alternative; for working people to come together to build a new society on the foundation created by the socialists of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party.
We need to fight and struggle to re-establish the liberal, democratic and progressive socialist traditions for which Minnesota is known around the world.
We have complex problems before us… but, any country which can spend trillions of dollars on wars to steal the oil of other nations, and trillions of dollars bailing out corporations and bankers looking for using socialism to solve the problems of their own creation as they have sought to prop up their rotten capitalist system--- which they have touted to the world as being the best--- at our expense… This Nation can now come up with the resources to use socialism to solve the problems for the rest of us, too.
What is good for the goose is, in this case, is even better for the gander.
Let Barack Obama and John McCain volunteer to go off exploring the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for Osama Bin Laden; we have better things to do.
Our first priority is to end these dirty wars for oil and redeploy those funds--- as we bring home the troops--- to creating a world class socialized health care system which will create millions of new jobs; five messes the money-grubbing Wall Street coupon clippers and their bought and paid for politicians created, all solved at the same time by ending these dirty imperialist wars for oil and regional domination--- we get health care not warfare, and we begin to solve the problem of unemployment--- and when we put people to work in this way we begin to create a new--- functioning--- people oriented, cooperative, socialist economy where democracy will flourish because it will require the full participation and involvement of all people working together in order to succeed.
Second, without further delay, we need to establish the State Bank of Minnesota to accomplish for our State what the State Bank of North Dakota was set up, by workers and farmers, to do--- fund enterprises to keep people working.
Third, we need a minimum wage which is a real living wage arrived at by the calculations of the United States Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics in cooperation with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development--- based upon the real figures relating to the real cost of living and this minimum wage should be required by legislation to be updated quarterly right along with the release of all economic indicators to assure a quality life and decent standard of living for all working people and their families.
We have finally come to the point where even the parasitic bankers and the exploiting industrialists now concede that only socialism can bail them out of this horrible mess and solve their problems... capitalism has reached the end of the line and the only thing now to be had from the system is unending human misery.
At the point where society has to pay to clean up the corrupt mess these parasitic predatory lenders and financial institutions have created, this is the time to say:
Enough!
What tax-payers finance, tax-payers must own.
If Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs do not like these terms, these greedy pigs should make the trip to their off-shore banks in the Cayman Islands and make withdrawals from their accounts to pay to solve their own problems.
The time has come to roll up our sleeves, come together, and get to work quickly before this entire rotten system collapses---like the I35-W Bridge--- and crushes us all while leaving our children and grandchildren with the clean-up and the bills.
I firmly believe working people can run our country and our state better than any of the big-business politicians being funded by the corporate lobbyists.
Effectively using the tools of public ownership and nationalization combined with modern, scientific planning for the common good, we can put people to work in decent jobs at real living wages... we hear it all the time just before Election Day: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs... but we never see the jobs, and if we do, these jobs are poverty wage jobs no one can live on.
I intend to run for Governor of Minnesota in 2010.
I invite all working people who think that it is possible to create something better than the mess we are now in, to come together and work from where socialist Governors Floyd B. Olson and Elmer A. Benson left off in trying to create a just and decent society where people live and work in harmony with Mother Nature, to join with me, in establishing the Minnesota Party to give the bankers, the mining, forestry and power generating industries along with the industrialists and big-agribusiness a real run for their money.
Let’s run these parasites that have been living off of our labor and destroying Mother Nature right out of our state. We can get along just fine--- even better--- without them.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
and
Candidate for Governor of Minnesota
Former member: Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party State Central Committee
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
A Real Solution for our Economy
A Real Solution for our Economy
By Joe Wantz
October 7th, 2008 - 3:04pm ET
The national conversation has been focused squarely on the economy in the last several weeks, with pundits and experts breathlessly declaring a financial catastrophe of epic scale. Of course, those of us who live in the real world knew the economy has been in trouble far before Wall Street failed. We know people who had their house lost to foreclosure. We know people who have had their jobs outsourced or eliminated. We know people who work more than one job to pay the bills and support their families. And we know that something needs to change.
Change, however, cannot simply come from the top down. The financial market bailout may help to restore confidence on Wall Street, but does little to cure the many problems on Main Street. The average American worker needs more than assurances that once the financial markets are “fixed” that they will be taken care of. Workers truly need to have their own voice and determine their own economic destiny. One of the best ways to do that, of course, is through forming a union at work. Unfortunately, over the last thirty years, employers across the United States have cracked down on organizing, resulting in a decline of union membership. It comes as no surprise that during that time wages have stagnated, 47 million Americans have no health insurance, and foreclosures have skyrocketed out of control.
The Employee Free Choice Act is an important part of the fight to regain the American dream for millions of workers. It will level the playing field by giving employees a free and direct path to form unions, toughen penalties against employers who break the law, and help restore balance to our obsolete federal labor laws. Union members earn 30% more, have better access to health care and other benefits, and have greater job security. Let’s get the conversation back to where it belongs, on the well-being and strength of the American worker. It’s time our economy worked for everyone again.
The author works for American Rights at Work, www.americanrightsatwork.org
My response:
The Employee Free Choice Act
By Alan Maki | October 7th, 2008 - 4:59pm GMT
Mr. Wantz, you fail to mention that some twenty-eight states have "at-will hiring, at-will firing" legislation which makes the Employee Free Choice Act useless for workers in these twenty-eight states including the huge industrial state of Michigan and Minnesota.
You also fail to mention that the The Employee Free Choice Act will have no affect on some two-million casino workers employed at jobs in the Indian Gaming Industry who are forced to work in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws in spite of the fact that the "Compacts" creating this Indian Gaming Industry are the creations of state and federal governments.
These two-million workers employed under these Draconian conditions in the Indian Gaming Industry would, again, be excluded from The Employee Free Choice Act.
When is your organization, American Rights at Work going to acknowledge this problem and bring forward solutions.
As you are fully aware, the Democratic Governor of Michigan has just signed her signature to another one of these "Compacts" without insisting that the rights of workers be protected. Governor Granholm could have withheld her signature from this "Compact" and insisted that before she approved it, all laws regulating terms of employment and working conditions must be adhered to. I would note that the state and federal bureaucracies regulate the one-armed bandits and inspect these slot machines... certainly the lives of working people employed in these casinos are as important as the machines rigged to take in money.
December 10, 2008 marks the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights and here we have the Democratic Party touting the Employee Free Choice Act which, for all practical purposes will leave working people in twenty-eight states without protection from a piece of legislation claiming to aid workers in union organizing and some two-million workers employed in more than 450 casinos strung out across this country will have no rights at all... for whom The Employee Free Choice Act will be completely meaningless.
How would you suggest that these casino workers escape from poverty?
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
By Joe Wantz
October 7th, 2008 - 3:04pm ET
The national conversation has been focused squarely on the economy in the last several weeks, with pundits and experts breathlessly declaring a financial catastrophe of epic scale. Of course, those of us who live in the real world knew the economy has been in trouble far before Wall Street failed. We know people who had their house lost to foreclosure. We know people who have had their jobs outsourced or eliminated. We know people who work more than one job to pay the bills and support their families. And we know that something needs to change.
Change, however, cannot simply come from the top down. The financial market bailout may help to restore confidence on Wall Street, but does little to cure the many problems on Main Street. The average American worker needs more than assurances that once the financial markets are “fixed” that they will be taken care of. Workers truly need to have their own voice and determine their own economic destiny. One of the best ways to do that, of course, is through forming a union at work. Unfortunately, over the last thirty years, employers across the United States have cracked down on organizing, resulting in a decline of union membership. It comes as no surprise that during that time wages have stagnated, 47 million Americans have no health insurance, and foreclosures have skyrocketed out of control.
The Employee Free Choice Act is an important part of the fight to regain the American dream for millions of workers. It will level the playing field by giving employees a free and direct path to form unions, toughen penalties against employers who break the law, and help restore balance to our obsolete federal labor laws. Union members earn 30% more, have better access to health care and other benefits, and have greater job security. Let’s get the conversation back to where it belongs, on the well-being and strength of the American worker. It’s time our economy worked for everyone again.
The author works for American Rights at Work, www.americanrightsatwork.org
My response:
The Employee Free Choice Act
By Alan Maki | October 7th, 2008 - 4:59pm GMT
Mr. Wantz, you fail to mention that some twenty-eight states have "at-will hiring, at-will firing" legislation which makes the Employee Free Choice Act useless for workers in these twenty-eight states including the huge industrial state of Michigan and Minnesota.
You also fail to mention that the The Employee Free Choice Act will have no affect on some two-million casino workers employed at jobs in the Indian Gaming Industry who are forced to work in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws in spite of the fact that the "Compacts" creating this Indian Gaming Industry are the creations of state and federal governments.
These two-million workers employed under these Draconian conditions in the Indian Gaming Industry would, again, be excluded from The Employee Free Choice Act.
When is your organization, American Rights at Work going to acknowledge this problem and bring forward solutions.
As you are fully aware, the Democratic Governor of Michigan has just signed her signature to another one of these "Compacts" without insisting that the rights of workers be protected. Governor Granholm could have withheld her signature from this "Compact" and insisted that before she approved it, all laws regulating terms of employment and working conditions must be adhered to. I would note that the state and federal bureaucracies regulate the one-armed bandits and inspect these slot machines... certainly the lives of working people employed in these casinos are as important as the machines rigged to take in money.
December 10, 2008 marks the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights and here we have the Democratic Party touting the Employee Free Choice Act which, for all practical purposes will leave working people in twenty-eight states without protection from a piece of legislation claiming to aid workers in union organizing and some two-million workers employed in more than 450 casinos strung out across this country will have no rights at all... for whom The Employee Free Choice Act will be completely meaningless.
How would you suggest that these casino workers escape from poverty?
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Saturday, August 16, 2008
The litany of lies surrounding the Gun Lake casino "Compact" and venture continues
The corruption begins with the lies put forward by the so-called "Friends of the Gun Lake Indians"... This is the way the Fertitta Family and Brownstein/Hyatt/Farber/Schreck work... first come the lies, then the bribes, then the intimidation and terror... from this the profits flow.
Frank Fertitta on right.
-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Maki [mailto:amaki000@centurytel.net]
Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2008 5:26 PM
To: 'judith_bott@msn.com'; 'kathy_bowerman@hotmail.com'; 'deyoungscarpet@sbcglobal.net'; 'mugs45@yahoo.com'; 'whitley.tn@gmail.com'; 'dorrvillageautobody@sbcglobal.net'; 'jgoldstein@americanrightsatwork.org'
Cc: 'debssoc@sbcglobal.net'; 'pluse@grpress.com'; 'editor@kalamazoogazette.com'; 'editor@penasee.com'; 'bbrown@allegannews.com'; 'jadnews@voyager.net'; 'mzweig@notes.cc.sunysb.edu'; 'rachleff@macalester.edu'
Subject: The litany of lies surrounding the Gun Lake casino "Compact" and venture continues
What kind of liars has Frank Fertitta and Station Casinos purchased? Here are their faces:
Look at the lies:
These are the “TALKING POINTS FOR LETTERS” this group has circulated:
• Provide jobs: Creating 1,800 new jobs with great benefits and an average compensation package of $40,000.
Lie: Why haven’t these liars provided proof of what the actual jobs will pay along with listing the great benefits for each job classification?
• Creating 3,100 new indirect jobs in the local community.
Lie: No proof what so ever.
• Purchasing more than $20 million per year in products and services from West Michigan businesses.
Lie: No proof of this. Where is the list?
• Generating $6 million in additional annual revenues for local hotels and bringing 80,000 new guests to local hotels each year.
Lie: No facts to substantiate this.
• Building a world-class entertainment venue in West Michigan that will increase tourism to the area.
True; and it will attract prostitution, loan-sharking, illegal gambling on everything from the ponies to high school sports along with a huge trade in drugs.
• Sharing millions of dollars in revenues each year with local communities to address needs for education, police, fire, and other public safety services.
Lie: Tax-payers will subsidize infrastructure and public services.
• Boosting the economy: In total, Michigan tribes have contributed more than $225 million to the state and more than $115 million to local governments that are located near the reservations.
Fact: The state has spent over one-billion dollars subsidizing infrastructure for existing casinos and local tax-payers have coughed up 1.4 Billion dollars.
• Matter of fairness: There are 12 federally recognized tribes in the state. The Gun Lake Tribe is the only federally recognized tribe in the state which does not have a compact for class III gaming. The law allows the tribe to build a casino. A compact guarantees that our community will benefit as well.
Question: Does anyone care about the 1,800 workers who will be forced to work in this smoke-filled casino at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws?
• The tribe and its project is supported by more than 35 Chambers, schools, labor unions, municipalities, tourist councils, alliances, and lodging associations. That number is growing every day.
Name all of them.
• Allow the Gun Lake Tribe the opportunity to promote tribal economic development, self-sufficiency and strong governments. It would help establish education and cultural programs, housing, elders-care facility and senior housing.
This is the biggest lie of all… a few corrupt tribal officials will profit and just like everything else under this rotten system the majority of the people will continue to suffer as the Fertitta family laughs all the way back to the banks in Las Vegas and the no-tax zones of the Caribbean.
Only complete fools would believe the lies being peddled by the so-called “Friends of the Gun Lake Indians;” the very same people who never whimpered a voice of protest as Native Americans have been subjected to a racist campaign of genocide for years… until there are profits to be made.
All lies… the news media prints these lies without one iota of concern for the rights of working people as this front group for the Kansas City Mob and the Fertitta family, which falsely claims ten-thousand members, ignores the real facts and has remained silent concerning the plight of casino workers... just like they have remained silent for years in the face of racism, poverty and despair.
In fact, since these liars did not inform those they have sought support from of the terms of employment of the 1,800 workers they do not have 10,000 supporters. It is deceitful and dishonest to claim 10,000 supporters who have been told only the “facts” of these “talking points.”
When these 10,000 supporters are informed of the health affects from working day in and day out in a smoke-filed casino and shown the wage scales for each of the positions, then, and only then, can the so-called “Friends of the Gun Lake Indians” claim 10,000 supporters.
Contacting the American Cancer Society and the Heart and Lung Foundation for the facts is simple and easy--- in fact, one only needs to look at the many bill-boards dotting the highways educating people to the harmful affects of second-hand smoke.
As for pay scales and benefits for these jobs… it should be a relatively simple task for the “Friends of the Gun Lake Indians” to post this information on their website, and the Gun Lake Band could do the same thing… then, and only then, can the “Friends of the Gun Lake Indians” claim 10,000 supporters.
Contact these uncaring, insensitive liars who don’t care that 1,800 of their fellow human beings will go to work in another smoke-filled casino at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws so a bunch of fools can sit their butts on a stool and let rigged one-armed bandits steal their money so Frank Fertitta and his friends don’t have to rob jewelry stores and banks… this way, the Kansas City Mob can make their living “skimming” the profits from the Gun Lake Band whose members won’t even be allowed in the “money room”:
Question: Has anyone factored in health care costs for cancers and heart and lung diseases from which so many casino workers suffer?
Comment: Wayne Newton and his quacking white duck will be making an appearance selling Aflack... quack, quack, quack.
Where To Write
*
Grand Rapids Press, 155 Michigan NW, Grand Rapids, MI, 49503, Attn: Editor, pulse@grpress.com
*
Kalamazoo Gazette, 410 S. Burdick, Kalamazoo, MI, 49007, editor@kalamazoogazette.com
*
Penasee Globe, 133 E. Superior, Wayland, MI 49348, Attn: Editor, editor@penasee.com
*
Allegan County News, 231 Trowbridge St. Allegan, MI 49010, bbrown@allegannews.com
*
Hastings Banner, 1351 N. M-43 Hwy., Hastings, MI 49058, Attn: Editor, jadnews@voyager.net
*
Honorable Governor Granholm, PO Box 30013, Lansing, MI 48909
Saturday, August 16, 2008
American Rights at Work... will David Bonior respond?
John Edwards has been intimidated into silence--- quite typical for the well-heeled who occasionally speak up against injustices; especially when they are trying to get elected to public office.
David Bonior, who worked to elect Edwards, like a rat on a sinking ship jumped off the Edwards' band-wagon real quick, too.
The "commitment" of the well-heeled when it comes to the issues affecting poverty and the rights of working people is always welcome; but, as working people we have come to expect most of these well-heeled, sometimes well-meaning (except when their involvement is just for political convenience as in Edwards' case; making a few extra retirement bucks as in David Bonior's case)will be of a nature of "support" for our struggles which will be subject to the "comfort zone" of these "love me, love me, I'm a liberal" types like David Bonior and John Edwards.
David Bonior is the Chair of American Rights at Work.
Here is the biography he provides:
Now, here we have this guy who pretends to be so concerned about working people and their rights; and, he pretends in the same manner to be so personally hurt by John Edwards little tryst with a cute young hippie chick.
But. Yes, but; Bonior lives among the degenerate and the depraved servants of big-business in Washington D.C., and he has a front row seat at the three-ring circus which passes itself off to the world as the greatest bastion of democracy.
What is interesting about David Bonior is he served such a long tenure in Congress working the entire time with the Michigan legislature, before being appointed to this position of Chair of the "American Rights at Work," which is nothing more than a group which searches the Internet in quest of articles for where working people have had their rights abused... American Rights at Work puts up a few new articles and stories on its web site, and that is where the "struggle" against injustice ends.
David Bonior, as a highly influential Michigan Congressman as his own biography points out, had the opportunity to make a major contribution in the struggle for worker rights--- for human rights, but, Mr. Bonior CHOSE to close his eyes, and cover his ears as the "Compacts" creating the Indian Casino Industry were being created WITHOUT ONE SINGLE CONCERN OR PROTECTION FOR THE RIGHTS OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN WORKERS who would be employed in this industry.
Mr. Bonior was fully aware at the time he voted for these "Compacts," not just one, but many of them in Michigan and around the country, that the thousands of workers who would be employed in these casinos, would have no rights at all under state or federal labor laws.
Where was Mr. Bonior's concern for "social and economic rights" as he was helping to create, and then approve, these casino "Compacts?"
Not once since "American Rights at Work" came into existence for the sole purpose of giving David Bonior a nice cushy retirement income, has this most Draconian arrangement created by these "Compacts" been brought forward or challenged by Mr. Bonior.
The least Mr. Bonior could do is pretend the same moral outrage and disgust demonstrated towards John Edwards' tryst.
Now, with Congressman Bonior's help and David Bonior's silence as Chair of American Rights at Work, the Indian Gaming Industry has grown to over four-hundred casinos spread out across the United States; these are businesses operated and managed by some of the most violent and notorious mobsters, including the most feared Kansas City Mob which Gary Hart tried to destroy until running into his own problems like John Edwards did... although someone--- maybe Brownstein or Schreck or Frank Fertitta--- would know something about this; who picked more sophisticated women for Gary Hart rather than a single hippie chick chosen for John Edwards.
Now, if the rights of American workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry which is nothing more than a front for organized crime which owns the one-armed bandits, operates very lucrative loan-shark operations, together with prostitution and drugs and the illegal betting on everything from the ponies to high school basketball games in these casinos isn't of concern to Mr. Bonior as Chair of American Rights at Work, I don't know what the retired Michigan Congressman would consider an abuse of the rights of working people--- to allow human beings to be forced to work in such an environment without a whimper of protest; where without any rights in the work-place, and without a voice in the workplace--- workers are dragged into this "under-world" as unwilling participants which makes what John Edwards and his cute young hippie chick did as consenting adults seem rather innocent... especially when such behavior is common place among Mr. Bonior's friends of the political elite--- one needs look no further than the "family life" of David Bonior's good friend, Michigan's United States Senator Debbie Stabenow who sent her husband off to get blow-jobs in sleazy motel rooms from young, barely of legal age, prostitutes.
But, what consenting adults do, whether as volunteers or as a "business arrangement"--- you know, I guess there is something to be said about someone having the creativity to take advantage of the great "free market" in the area of the sex industry to the extent that poverty isn't forcing the decision. But, what is done between two consenting adults is no concern of mine as far as judging anyone concerning their morals and it shouldn't be an issue for anyone except some pious preachers (and Presidents) who engage in such decadent and perverted activities only with God's forgiveness.
What goes on with the business elite behind the closed doors in the Presidential Suites of the highest priced hotels we won't discuss nor mention... suffice it to say that St. Paul Police and Colorado police agencies are not only preparing for demonstrators at the Republican and Democratic Party's National Conventions, but for an influx of thousands of prostitutes in each city where the conventions are to be held.
Here in the Twin Cities Mayors R.T. and Coleman are trying to decide how many condoms and needles they need to order for free distribution during the Republican convention in addition to tasars and cattle prods which I assume aren't for erotic pleasures of anyone except the police who get their jollies using them.
However, I do think, unlike the John Edwards' affair, the issue of workers' rights is a question of morals and ethics which should concern us all, especially when we have those like David Bonior feigning being appalled by what John Edwards and a cute young hippie chick did behind closed doors--- at least those doors remained closed until those doors were opened by someone who wanted John Edwards to stop talking about poverty and workers' rights; conveniently those doors to John Edwards' love shack were opened on the heels of the opening of the Democratic Party Convention where he had been scheduled to speak about eliminating poverty and for workers' rights as human rights--- even though he intended to continue the omission of the rights, or lack thereof, of casino workers in the Indian gaming Industry.
But, what I was getting at is David Bonior, had the opportunity as a Congressman--- a long-time serving congressman as he boasts in his own biography; and, a second opportunity as the Chair of "American Rights at Work" to boldly speak up in defence of the rights of those employed in the Indian Gaming Industry--- just as he so quickly did within minutes once the John Edwards "scandal" broke--- gees, David Bonior was just so hurt; to hear David Bonior's pain you would think right-wing rocker Ted Nugent had pierced Bonior's heart with his Jim Bowie hunting knife.
But, where has been David Bonior's concern, and passion, for the rights of more than two-million casino workers now employed in these smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws all of these years he has been so concerned about social justice?
Mr. Bonior's organization, American Rights at Work, cites cases upon case of the abuse of worker's rights--- and it is good that he picks these cases up off the Internet to highlight since the abuses workers are subjected to at work in America are growing rapidly (right along with the increase in corporate profits and the strengthening of state-monopoly capitalism where employers are playing a much more open role in government and the political life of the country to the point where Wal-mart has the arrogance to flaunt the law as they intimidate workers now by "suggesting" who they must vote for).
But, one would think that Mr. Bonior would be able to demonstrate at least some concern for two-million casino workers; and have at least a few words to say about these casino managements and the anti-labor, union busting firms they are hiring as what he has been quick to point out as a breach in morality on the part of John Edwards and his cute hippie chick, which we would never have known about had Brownstein/Hyatt/Farber/Schreck not wanted John Edwards "wrecking" the Democratic Party National Convention with the call that the Democratic Party should place eradicating poverty and bringing the rights of working people to the center stage of the convention and the three-ring circus in Washington.
I would also point out that David Bonior was aware that John Edwards sat on the board of a corporation, one of the largest corporations in the world--- a corporation funded by the teachers' unions pension funds--- whose primary field of investments is in what? Building casinos for the Indian Gaming Industry!
So much for David Bonior's concern for the rights of American workers and social justice.
I submit, that the plight of more than two-million workers in the Indian Gaming Industry--- a plight which David Bonior played a major role in denying rights to these casino workers--- not the denial one right or the denial of several rights--- but denying ALL RIGHTS to more than two-million workers at their places of employment in the Indian Gaming Industry is what David Bonior and his Democratic Party colleagues should be addressing to the media, and not John Edwards' tryst with what the media calls a "hippie chick."
In fact, there is something to be said about the viciously sexist way Rupert Murdock has portrayed Rielle Hunter as a "hippie chick;" but, again, in comparison to the plight of hundreds of thousands of young women workers, many who are women of color--- all of child-bearing age, employed in the Indian Gaming Industry in smoke-filled casinos... the sexism of Rupert Murdoch seems rather a non-issue... even though I hear United States Senator Debbie Stabenow has asked the National Organization of Women (NOW) to protest.
Not to worry, David Bonior and Brownstein/Hyatt/Farber/Schreck have spared the Nation being subjected to the rantings of an immoral John Edwards against poverty and for the advancement of workers' rights as human rights during prime-time television by having the good wisdom of bringing in Bill Clinton as the speaker to replace him at the Democratic National Convention. And, instead of hearing about the plight of some two-million casino workers and American rights at work and poverty wages, we will now be hearing about the spots on Monica Lewinsky's blue dress.
Like I said, the three-ring circus continues with it pre-show sideshows of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions; always, the show must go on. And, the show goes on at the expense of the rights of all workers in America who are being subjected to greater abuse in their places of employment as big-business gains an even tighter and firmer grip (now, I hope no one reads anything sexual into this) over lives of working people.
Come on, David Bonior, step right up--- pretend you are the ring-master, front and center stage, and call upon the Democratic Party to finally take a stand in defense of the rights of two-million Americans being forced to work in the Indian Gaming Industry because of your own actions... why don't you start demonstrating real concern for working people by insisting that Michigan's "pro-labor" governor, Jennifer Granholm, rescind her support with the corruption plagued "Gun Lake Casino Compact," by insisting--- for the first time in American history--- that this "Compact" contains rights protecting casino workers; that all state and federal labor laws be applicable to workers in the Indian Gaming Industry.
Talk it over with John Sweeney, Andy Stern and your good friends Ron Gettelfinger and Leo Gerard.
You might also want to consult with your good friend Nadine Nosal--- the UAW's lead lobbyist in Lansing, Michigan. Let's get Nadine going on opposing this Gun Lake Casino Compact until the rights of workers are included.
Mr. Bonior, I know your good friends Gary Garbarino and House Majority Leader Steve Tobocman are going to tell you not to listen to me because the Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council's Organizing Committees in Michigan in Escanaba (Island Casino) and Petoskey (Odawa Casino) refuse to make any campaign contributions to the Democratic Party; but, consider this part of my contribution towards the 2008 elections. And, consider that the rights of some two-million casino workers should place as a higher priority on your own political agenda and concerns than what John Edwards and his hippie chick did in the privacy of their motel and hotel bedrooms or what they did "flying on a jet plane."
Now, do you have anything to say regarding the plight of two-million casino workers across the Nation?
No, I didn't think so.
The campaign contributions from the illustrious Fertitta family and Brownstein/Hyatt/Farber/Schreck mean more to you.
Your "tenure in Congress was marked by a passion for social and economic justice;" give me a break.
Mr. Bonior, what a hypocrite you are. You are really no different or any better than John Edwards... and maybe that is why you jumped so fast to pounce on your former friend... who I notice, is on the Board of Directors of "Americans Right at Work."
American Rights at Work...Board of Directors
Hon. David Bonior
Chair, American Rights at Work
Julian Bond
Chairman, NAACP
The Right Reverend Jane Holmes Dixon
Bishop of Washington, Pro tempore, retired
Sen. John Edwards
Mayor Shirley Franklin
Atlanta
Wade Henderson
Executive Director, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
Philip Levine
Poet
Jack Marco
Chairman, Marco Consulting Group
Hon. Kweisi Mfume
Janet Murguia
President & CEO, National Council of La Raza
Carl Pope
Executive Director, Sierra Club
Imam Sayed Hassan Al-Qazwini
Leader, The Islamic Center of America
Harley Shaiken
Professor & Director, Center for Latin American Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Beth Shulman
Author
Congresswoman Hilda Solis
32nd District, California
Rabbi Alana Suskin
John J. Sweeney
President, AFL-CIO
Bradley Whitford
Actor
International Advisor:
Mary Robinson
Former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Must be Mary Robinson forgot to read the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights along with the rest of the American Rights at Work's Board of Directors.
As for "Card Check," the Employee Free Choice Act; this won't apply to the Nation's two-million workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry... once again, forgotten, by David Bonior and his chums at the helms of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win. And, as far as Barack Obama who was mentored by Frank Marshall Davis... well, Obama has his surrogates, like George McGovern, out bashing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
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/
Frank Fertitta on right.
-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Maki [mailto:amaki000@centurytel.net]
Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2008 5:26 PM
To: 'judith_bott@msn.com'; 'kathy_bowerman@hotmail.com'; 'deyoungscarpet@sbcglobal.net'; 'mugs45@yahoo.com'; 'whitley.tn@gmail.com'; 'dorrvillageautobody@sbcglobal.net'; 'jgoldstein@americanrightsatwork.org'
Cc: 'debssoc@sbcglobal.net'; 'pluse@grpress.com'; 'editor@kalamazoogazette.com'; 'editor@penasee.com'; 'bbrown@allegannews.com'; 'jadnews@voyager.net'; 'mzweig@notes.cc.sunysb.edu'; 'rachleff@macalester.edu'
Subject: The litany of lies surrounding the Gun Lake casino "Compact" and venture continues
What kind of liars has Frank Fertitta and Station Casinos purchased? Here are their faces:
Look at the lies:
These are the “TALKING POINTS FOR LETTERS” this group has circulated:
• Provide jobs: Creating 1,800 new jobs with great benefits and an average compensation package of $40,000.
Lie: Why haven’t these liars provided proof of what the actual jobs will pay along with listing the great benefits for each job classification?
• Creating 3,100 new indirect jobs in the local community.
Lie: No proof what so ever.
• Purchasing more than $20 million per year in products and services from West Michigan businesses.
Lie: No proof of this. Where is the list?
• Generating $6 million in additional annual revenues for local hotels and bringing 80,000 new guests to local hotels each year.
Lie: No facts to substantiate this.
• Building a world-class entertainment venue in West Michigan that will increase tourism to the area.
True; and it will attract prostitution, loan-sharking, illegal gambling on everything from the ponies to high school sports along with a huge trade in drugs.
• Sharing millions of dollars in revenues each year with local communities to address needs for education, police, fire, and other public safety services.
Lie: Tax-payers will subsidize infrastructure and public services.
• Boosting the economy: In total, Michigan tribes have contributed more than $225 million to the state and more than $115 million to local governments that are located near the reservations.
Fact: The state has spent over one-billion dollars subsidizing infrastructure for existing casinos and local tax-payers have coughed up 1.4 Billion dollars.
• Matter of fairness: There are 12 federally recognized tribes in the state. The Gun Lake Tribe is the only federally recognized tribe in the state which does not have a compact for class III gaming. The law allows the tribe to build a casino. A compact guarantees that our community will benefit as well.
Question: Does anyone care about the 1,800 workers who will be forced to work in this smoke-filled casino at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws?
• The tribe and its project is supported by more than 35 Chambers, schools, labor unions, municipalities, tourist councils, alliances, and lodging associations. That number is growing every day.
Name all of them.
In fact, the Southwest Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council has entered into a thoroughly corrupt and illegal sweetheart contract with the Gun Lake Band and the Fertitta family for casino construction.
• Allow the Gun Lake Tribe the opportunity to promote tribal economic development, self-sufficiency and strong governments. It would help establish education and cultural programs, housing, elders-care facility and senior housing.
This is the biggest lie of all… a few corrupt tribal officials will profit and just like everything else under this rotten system the majority of the people will continue to suffer as the Fertitta family laughs all the way back to the banks in Las Vegas and the no-tax zones of the Caribbean.
Only complete fools would believe the lies being peddled by the so-called “Friends of the Gun Lake Indians;” the very same people who never whimpered a voice of protest as Native Americans have been subjected to a racist campaign of genocide for years… until there are profits to be made.
Fact: Most people will not be able to afford the gas to get to these jobs.
All lies… the news media prints these lies without one iota of concern for the rights of working people as this front group for the Kansas City Mob and the Fertitta family, which falsely claims ten-thousand members, ignores the real facts and has remained silent concerning the plight of casino workers... just like they have remained silent for years in the face of racism, poverty and despair.
In fact, since these liars did not inform those they have sought support from of the terms of employment of the 1,800 workers they do not have 10,000 supporters. It is deceitful and dishonest to claim 10,000 supporters who have been told only the “facts” of these “talking points.”
When these 10,000 supporters are informed of the health affects from working day in and day out in a smoke-filed casino and shown the wage scales for each of the positions, then, and only then, can the so-called “Friends of the Gun Lake Indians” claim 10,000 supporters.
Contacting the American Cancer Society and the Heart and Lung Foundation for the facts is simple and easy--- in fact, one only needs to look at the many bill-boards dotting the highways educating people to the harmful affects of second-hand smoke.
As for pay scales and benefits for these jobs… it should be a relatively simple task for the “Friends of the Gun Lake Indians” to post this information on their website, and the Gun Lake Band could do the same thing… then, and only then, can the “Friends of the Gun Lake Indians” claim 10,000 supporters.
Contact these uncaring, insensitive liars who don’t care that 1,800 of their fellow human beings will go to work in another smoke-filled casino at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws so a bunch of fools can sit their butts on a stool and let rigged one-armed bandits steal their money so Frank Fertitta and his friends don’t have to rob jewelry stores and banks… this way, the Kansas City Mob can make their living “skimming” the profits from the Gun Lake Band whose members won’t even be allowed in the “money room”:
Question: Has anyone factored in health care costs for cancers and heart and lung diseases from which so many casino workers suffer?
Comment: Wayne Newton and his quacking white duck will be making an appearance selling Aflack... quack, quack, quack.
Friends Of Gun Lake Indians COUNCIL MEMBERS
Name Phone Email
Judy Bott (616) 878-4167 judith_bott@msn.com
Kathy Bowerman (616) 681-2310 kathy_bowerman@hotmail.com
Elise DeYoung (616) 681-9669 deyoungscarpet@sbcglobal.net.
Marcia Halloran (616) 877-4554 mugs45@yahoo.com
Terry Whitley - whitley.tn@gmail.com
Bob Wagner (616) 681-9776 dorrvillageautobody@sbcglobal.net
Where To Write
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Grand Rapids Press, 155 Michigan NW, Grand Rapids, MI, 49503, Attn: Editor, pulse@grpress.com
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Kalamazoo Gazette, 410 S. Burdick, Kalamazoo, MI, 49007, editor@kalamazoogazette.com
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Penasee Globe, 133 E. Superior, Wayland, MI 49348, Attn: Editor, editor@penasee.com
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Allegan County News, 231 Trowbridge St. Allegan, MI 49010, bbrown@allegannews.com
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Hastings Banner, 1351 N. M-43 Hwy., Hastings, MI 49058, Attn: Editor, jadnews@voyager.net
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Honorable Governor Granholm, PO Box 30013, Lansing, MI 48909
Saturday, August 16, 2008
American Rights at Work... will David Bonior respond?
John Edwards has been intimidated into silence--- quite typical for the well-heeled who occasionally speak up against injustices; especially when they are trying to get elected to public office.
David Bonior, who worked to elect Edwards, like a rat on a sinking ship jumped off the Edwards' band-wagon real quick, too.
The "commitment" of the well-heeled when it comes to the issues affecting poverty and the rights of working people is always welcome; but, as working people we have come to expect most of these well-heeled, sometimes well-meaning (except when their involvement is just for political convenience as in Edwards' case; making a few extra retirement bucks as in David Bonior's case)will be of a nature of "support" for our struggles which will be subject to the "comfort zone" of these "love me, love me, I'm a liberal" types like David Bonior and John Edwards.
David Bonior is the Chair of American Rights at Work.
Here is the biography he provides:
David Bonior is the Chair of American Rights at Work’s Board of Directors and has served in this role since the organization’s founding in 2003. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, he served Michigan’s Macomb and St. Clair Counties for 26 years—the longest tenure of any Congressman from this district. When he retired at the end of 2002, he had held the position of Democratic Whip, the second ranking Democrat in the House, for 10 years.
His tenure in Congress was marked by a passion for social and economic justice. Bonior earned a reputation as a strong voice for working families and as a leader on the environment, fair trade, jobs, and human and civil rights.
Born in Detroit, he graduated from the University of Iowa, received a Masters Degree in history from Chapman College, served in the Air Force, and worked as a probation officer and adoption caseworker before he was elected to the Michigan Legislature in 1972.
Bonior is the author of two books: The Vietnam Veteran: A History of Neglect and Walking to Mackinac. He previously served as University Professor of Labor Studies at Wayne State University and on the boards of Public Citizen and Community Central Bank in Mount Clemens, Mich. In 2007-2008, Bonior took a leave of absence from American Rights at Work to join John Edwards’ presidential campaign as the national campaign manager.
He and his wife Judy live in Washington, DC, and are the parents of three adult children.
Now, here we have this guy who pretends to be so concerned about working people and their rights; and, he pretends in the same manner to be so personally hurt by John Edwards little tryst with a cute young hippie chick.
But. Yes, but; Bonior lives among the degenerate and the depraved servants of big-business in Washington D.C., and he has a front row seat at the three-ring circus which passes itself off to the world as the greatest bastion of democracy.
What is interesting about David Bonior is he served such a long tenure in Congress working the entire time with the Michigan legislature, before being appointed to this position of Chair of the "American Rights at Work," which is nothing more than a group which searches the Internet in quest of articles for where working people have had their rights abused... American Rights at Work puts up a few new articles and stories on its web site, and that is where the "struggle" against injustice ends.
David Bonior, as a highly influential Michigan Congressman as his own biography points out, had the opportunity to make a major contribution in the struggle for worker rights--- for human rights, but, Mr. Bonior CHOSE to close his eyes, and cover his ears as the "Compacts" creating the Indian Casino Industry were being created WITHOUT ONE SINGLE CONCERN OR PROTECTION FOR THE RIGHTS OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN WORKERS who would be employed in this industry.
Mr. Bonior was fully aware at the time he voted for these "Compacts," not just one, but many of them in Michigan and around the country, that the thousands of workers who would be employed in these casinos, would have no rights at all under state or federal labor laws.
Where was Mr. Bonior's concern for "social and economic rights" as he was helping to create, and then approve, these casino "Compacts?"
Not once since "American Rights at Work" came into existence for the sole purpose of giving David Bonior a nice cushy retirement income, has this most Draconian arrangement created by these "Compacts" been brought forward or challenged by Mr. Bonior.
The least Mr. Bonior could do is pretend the same moral outrage and disgust demonstrated towards John Edwards' tryst.
Now, with Congressman Bonior's help and David Bonior's silence as Chair of American Rights at Work, the Indian Gaming Industry has grown to over four-hundred casinos spread out across the United States; these are businesses operated and managed by some of the most violent and notorious mobsters, including the most feared Kansas City Mob which Gary Hart tried to destroy until running into his own problems like John Edwards did... although someone--- maybe Brownstein or Schreck or Frank Fertitta--- would know something about this; who picked more sophisticated women for Gary Hart rather than a single hippie chick chosen for John Edwards.
Now, if the rights of American workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry which is nothing more than a front for organized crime which owns the one-armed bandits, operates very lucrative loan-shark operations, together with prostitution and drugs and the illegal betting on everything from the ponies to high school basketball games in these casinos isn't of concern to Mr. Bonior as Chair of American Rights at Work, I don't know what the retired Michigan Congressman would consider an abuse of the rights of working people--- to allow human beings to be forced to work in such an environment without a whimper of protest; where without any rights in the work-place, and without a voice in the workplace--- workers are dragged into this "under-world" as unwilling participants which makes what John Edwards and his cute young hippie chick did as consenting adults seem rather innocent... especially when such behavior is common place among Mr. Bonior's friends of the political elite--- one needs look no further than the "family life" of David Bonior's good friend, Michigan's United States Senator Debbie Stabenow who sent her husband off to get blow-jobs in sleazy motel rooms from young, barely of legal age, prostitutes.
But, what consenting adults do, whether as volunteers or as a "business arrangement"--- you know, I guess there is something to be said about someone having the creativity to take advantage of the great "free market" in the area of the sex industry to the extent that poverty isn't forcing the decision. But, what is done between two consenting adults is no concern of mine as far as judging anyone concerning their morals and it shouldn't be an issue for anyone except some pious preachers (and Presidents) who engage in such decadent and perverted activities only with God's forgiveness.
What goes on with the business elite behind the closed doors in the Presidential Suites of the highest priced hotels we won't discuss nor mention... suffice it to say that St. Paul Police and Colorado police agencies are not only preparing for demonstrators at the Republican and Democratic Party's National Conventions, but for an influx of thousands of prostitutes in each city where the conventions are to be held.
Here in the Twin Cities Mayors R.T. and Coleman are trying to decide how many condoms and needles they need to order for free distribution during the Republican convention in addition to tasars and cattle prods which I assume aren't for erotic pleasures of anyone except the police who get their jollies using them.
However, I do think, unlike the John Edwards' affair, the issue of workers' rights is a question of morals and ethics which should concern us all, especially when we have those like David Bonior feigning being appalled by what John Edwards and a cute young hippie chick did behind closed doors--- at least those doors remained closed until those doors were opened by someone who wanted John Edwards to stop talking about poverty and workers' rights; conveniently those doors to John Edwards' love shack were opened on the heels of the opening of the Democratic Party Convention where he had been scheduled to speak about eliminating poverty and for workers' rights as human rights--- even though he intended to continue the omission of the rights, or lack thereof, of casino workers in the Indian gaming Industry.
But, what I was getting at is David Bonior, had the opportunity as a Congressman--- a long-time serving congressman as he boasts in his own biography; and, a second opportunity as the Chair of "American Rights at Work" to boldly speak up in defence of the rights of those employed in the Indian Gaming Industry--- just as he so quickly did within minutes once the John Edwards "scandal" broke--- gees, David Bonior was just so hurt; to hear David Bonior's pain you would think right-wing rocker Ted Nugent had pierced Bonior's heart with his Jim Bowie hunting knife.
But, where has been David Bonior's concern, and passion, for the rights of more than two-million casino workers now employed in these smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws all of these years he has been so concerned about social justice?
Mr. Bonior's organization, American Rights at Work, cites cases upon case of the abuse of worker's rights--- and it is good that he picks these cases up off the Internet to highlight since the abuses workers are subjected to at work in America are growing rapidly (right along with the increase in corporate profits and the strengthening of state-monopoly capitalism where employers are playing a much more open role in government and the political life of the country to the point where Wal-mart has the arrogance to flaunt the law as they intimidate workers now by "suggesting" who they must vote for).
But, one would think that Mr. Bonior would be able to demonstrate at least some concern for two-million casino workers; and have at least a few words to say about these casino managements and the anti-labor, union busting firms they are hiring as what he has been quick to point out as a breach in morality on the part of John Edwards and his cute hippie chick, which we would never have known about had Brownstein/Hyatt/Farber/Schreck not wanted John Edwards "wrecking" the Democratic Party National Convention with the call that the Democratic Party should place eradicating poverty and bringing the rights of working people to the center stage of the convention and the three-ring circus in Washington.
I would also point out that David Bonior was aware that John Edwards sat on the board of a corporation, one of the largest corporations in the world--- a corporation funded by the teachers' unions pension funds--- whose primary field of investments is in what? Building casinos for the Indian Gaming Industry!
So much for David Bonior's concern for the rights of American workers and social justice.
I submit, that the plight of more than two-million workers in the Indian Gaming Industry--- a plight which David Bonior played a major role in denying rights to these casino workers--- not the denial one right or the denial of several rights--- but denying ALL RIGHTS to more than two-million workers at their places of employment in the Indian Gaming Industry is what David Bonior and his Democratic Party colleagues should be addressing to the media, and not John Edwards' tryst with what the media calls a "hippie chick."
In fact, there is something to be said about the viciously sexist way Rupert Murdock has portrayed Rielle Hunter as a "hippie chick;" but, again, in comparison to the plight of hundreds of thousands of young women workers, many who are women of color--- all of child-bearing age, employed in the Indian Gaming Industry in smoke-filled casinos... the sexism of Rupert Murdoch seems rather a non-issue... even though I hear United States Senator Debbie Stabenow has asked the National Organization of Women (NOW) to protest.
Not to worry, David Bonior and Brownstein/Hyatt/Farber/Schreck have spared the Nation being subjected to the rantings of an immoral John Edwards against poverty and for the advancement of workers' rights as human rights during prime-time television by having the good wisdom of bringing in Bill Clinton as the speaker to replace him at the Democratic National Convention. And, instead of hearing about the plight of some two-million casino workers and American rights at work and poverty wages, we will now be hearing about the spots on Monica Lewinsky's blue dress.
Like I said, the three-ring circus continues with it pre-show sideshows of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions; always, the show must go on. And, the show goes on at the expense of the rights of all workers in America who are being subjected to greater abuse in their places of employment as big-business gains an even tighter and firmer grip (now, I hope no one reads anything sexual into this) over lives of working people.
Come on, David Bonior, step right up--- pretend you are the ring-master, front and center stage, and call upon the Democratic Party to finally take a stand in defense of the rights of two-million Americans being forced to work in the Indian Gaming Industry because of your own actions... why don't you start demonstrating real concern for working people by insisting that Michigan's "pro-labor" governor, Jennifer Granholm, rescind her support with the corruption plagued "Gun Lake Casino Compact," by insisting--- for the first time in American history--- that this "Compact" contains rights protecting casino workers; that all state and federal labor laws be applicable to workers in the Indian Gaming Industry.
Talk it over with John Sweeney, Andy Stern and your good friends Ron Gettelfinger and Leo Gerard.
You might also want to consult with your good friend Nadine Nosal--- the UAW's lead lobbyist in Lansing, Michigan. Let's get Nadine going on opposing this Gun Lake Casino Compact until the rights of workers are included.
Mr. Bonior, I know your good friends Gary Garbarino and House Majority Leader Steve Tobocman are going to tell you not to listen to me because the Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council's Organizing Committees in Michigan in Escanaba (Island Casino) and Petoskey (Odawa Casino) refuse to make any campaign contributions to the Democratic Party; but, consider this part of my contribution towards the 2008 elections. And, consider that the rights of some two-million casino workers should place as a higher priority on your own political agenda and concerns than what John Edwards and his hippie chick did in the privacy of their motel and hotel bedrooms or what they did "flying on a jet plane."
Now, do you have anything to say regarding the plight of two-million casino workers across the Nation?
No, I didn't think so.
The campaign contributions from the illustrious Fertitta family and Brownstein/Hyatt/Farber/Schreck mean more to you.
Your "tenure in Congress was marked by a passion for social and economic justice;" give me a break.
Mr. Bonior, what a hypocrite you are. You are really no different or any better than John Edwards... and maybe that is why you jumped so fast to pounce on your former friend... who I notice, is on the Board of Directors of "Americans Right at Work."
American Rights at Work...Board of Directors
Hon. David Bonior
Chair, American Rights at Work
Julian Bond
Chairman, NAACP
The Right Reverend Jane Holmes Dixon
Bishop of Washington, Pro tempore, retired
Sen. John Edwards
Mayor Shirley Franklin
Atlanta
Wade Henderson
Executive Director, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
Philip Levine
Poet
Jack Marco
Chairman, Marco Consulting Group
Hon. Kweisi Mfume
Janet Murguia
President & CEO, National Council of La Raza
Carl Pope
Executive Director, Sierra Club
Imam Sayed Hassan Al-Qazwini
Leader, The Islamic Center of America
Harley Shaiken
Professor & Director, Center for Latin American Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Beth Shulman
Author
Congresswoman Hilda Solis
32nd District, California
Rabbi Alana Suskin
John J. Sweeney
President, AFL-CIO
Bradley Whitford
Actor
International Advisor:
Mary Robinson
Former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Must be Mary Robinson forgot to read the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights along with the rest of the American Rights at Work's Board of Directors.
As for "Card Check," the Employee Free Choice Act; this won't apply to the Nation's two-million workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry... once again, forgotten, by David Bonior and his chums at the helms of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win. And, as far as Barack Obama who was mentored by Frank Marshall Davis... well, Obama has his surrogates, like George McGovern, out bashing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
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/
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