Watch and share this video presented by the National Nurses United promoting a financial transaction tax on Wall Street trading to help restore the economy. The video portrays a banker whose greed contributes to the economic meltdown of a nation, resulting in lost pensions and jobs, as well as home foreclosures, and financial ruin for many Americans. The entertaining video short is inspired by The Twilight Zone, an American television anthology series created by Rod Serling.
January, 2012
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NIghtmare on Wall Street: the Case for a Financial Transactions Tax
January 22, 2012 by admin
Category Technology | Tags: Case,Financial,NIghtmare,Street,Transactions,Wall | No Comments
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Itochu Office in San Francisco Occupied to support ILWU at Longview Port
January 22, 2012 by admin
by Paul Garver
View ahd share this Labor Video Project creation of protestors occupying the San Francisco offices of Itochu. Itochu is a Japanese oilseed firm part of EGT, the business that is attempting to break ILWU Local 21 in the port of Longview, WA. We are reposting the video as element of our Labor and Occupy series.
Category Talking Readers | Tags: Francisco,ILWU,Itochu,Longview,Occupied,Office,Port,Support | No Comments
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Boston School Bus Drivers Win New Contract in Alliance with Occupy Boston
January 22, 2012 by admin
[Editorial Note]
USWA Local 8751 representing 800 college bus drivers in Boston has supported the Occupy Movement from the commence. Union members rallied on a regular basis with the Occupy Boston encampment at Dewey Square and Occupy the Hood in Roxbury’s Dudley Square. They joined marches with Verizon and Hyatt Hotel workers and set up sound trucks for anti-war and labor marches.In December 2011 the school bus drivers succeeded in winning a sharp contract fight with the British-based service contractor Very first Student. This report, written by the Regional Union Vice-President, is reposted as portion of our Labor and Occupy series, 1st appearing in Employees Planet.
bySteve Gillis
Following virtually a year of bitter struggle, the 800 members of the Boston College Bus Drivers’ Union, United Steelworkers Local 8751 rang in the new year, having won a profitable contract. It contained the very first-ever “Retirement with Dignity” package deal for people who have served the city’s schoolchildren and the result in of equal, high quality education considering that 1974.
The city’s bosses had planned 2012 really differently for these workers. Last spring, British-primarily based 1st Student, a monopoly stakeholder in U.S. school bus transportation, and its consumer, the city of Boston, presented the drivers’ union with 43 concessions at the bargaining table — a relentless strategy private and public employers have pushed with devastating impact across the nation.
Very first Student sought cuts in health rewards, wages, hours, operating conditions and rights on the task. Behind the scenes, they implemented a new large-tech routing method, designed to consolidate bus stops, carry a lot more college students, speed up driving time, and reduce driver hours and positions. They orchestrated a media campaign railing against the growing costs of college transportation, demanding a return to segregation-era neighborhood colleges, and calling for improved privatization of public college providers to charter companies.
The bosses’ strategy didn’t contemplate the fighting mood of the school bus drivers and their allies in the labor and community movements. On June 25, the workers struck back. At four a.m., hundreds massed at the company’s main bus yard, surprising private security and city cops. By sunrise a lot more than 500 workers, wielding “No Contract, No Work!” signs and backed by AFL-CIO officials and a courageous city councilor, shut down the corporation’s scheduled bid for summer season perform. Within days, most of the bosses’ demands have been withdrawn, but the drivers had more on their minds.
“We don’t go to retirement events we go to funerals” became the rallying cry for the largely Haitian, African-American, Cape Verdean and Latino/a drivers. A lot of have been forced by lack of retirement rewards to perform into their 60s, 70s and 80s. Some die ahead of their next shift.
This outrage resonated throughout the city. On Aug. 24, the evening prior to drivers’ operate began for the fall college phrase, hundreds of drivers and supporters jammed the Boston Teachers Union hall for a Neighborhood/Labor Solidarity Rally. Teachers, parents, students and Coalition for Equal, High quality Training leaders spoke, backing the drivers.
City Councilors Charles Yancey, Tito Jackson and Felix Arroyo, elected by Boston’s communities of color, pledged their clout for “Retirement with Dignity.” Striking Verizon workers, wearing red shirts proclaiming “Will Strike if Provoked,” came in solidarity. Progressives from MassUniting, the Women’s Fightback Network and the International Action Center raised the drivers’ demands as their own, earning rousing cheers. Whilst “Solidarity Forever” choruses filled the air, the bosses requested far more negotiations immediately.
At 2:00 the subsequent morning, Initial Student’s CEO located almost $ 2 million. The union’s demands appeared on their proposal, despite the fact that for year 3. On Sept. seven, the eve of the school term and with the neighborhood all set to strike, the union’s troubles moved up to year 1. The local’s elected, 15-member negotiating committee voted to carry on the struggle for far more justice.
At the occupation, the workers had been confronted with Tyler Technologies’ routing software package, Versatrans. The bosses’ program made routes with zero minutes among stops, required drivers to pick up 70 college students at far more than 20 stops in 20 minutes, and defied other laws of physics.
Crisis was the outcome. More than 40,000 college students had been late to college everyday. The mayor and media demanded drivers be disciplined. The union insisted that the organization and School Department scrap the software program and meet with drivers to rewrite the routes.
In the end, no drivers had been disciplined. As an alternative, the city’s transportation director was demoted. For three months, bus firm and city officials reluctantly met with hundreds of drivers at the bus yards. Route schedules have been rewritten, reflecting human and real-time realities, primarily based on driver input.
Simultaneously, the union rallied day-to-day with the Occupy Boston encampment at Dewey Square and Occupy the Hood in Roxbury’s Dudley Square. They led militant marches with Verizon and hotel employees, set up sound trucks for anti-war and labor marches, and participated in educate-ins, neighborhood speak-outs and veterans’ demonstrations.
The bosses observed, even docking union officers’ pay out when they left a meeting early to join the occupation, hoping in vain to slow the workers’ momentum. The union gained the upper hand in the yards, on the streets and in the communities.
Union wins ‘Retire with Dignity’ all concessions defeated
On Dec. 15, the local ratified a historic contract that for the first time provides the resources for its members to “Retire with Dignity.” It contains 40 new hires 3,500 further paid hrs weekly wage increases and enhanced existence insurance, medical, dental and extended-expression disability positive aspects. All concessions have been defeated.
Moreover, senior drivers can now retire with assured medical positive aspects and a distinctive severance payment. Most of the workers’ monetary gains came in a very first-time company match to workers’ retirement savings, a victory that countervails current employer attacks on retirees’ pensions.
Stevan Kirschbaum, a union founder and a driver because 1974, explained, “In the face of a united, militant effort to win financial justice by our members, the 1% showed themselves to be weak, uncoordinated and entirely topic to the determination of the drivers to shut them down if our demands were ignored.
“We plan to use this momentum to organize with the communities to cease the resegregation of Boston Public Colleges, to halt the shutdown of post offices and other important social providers, to turn about the schools-to-prison pipeline, and to develop the motion that will really empower the employees.”
Content articles copyright 1995-2012 Employees Planet. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire write-up is permitted in any medium with out royalty provided this notice is preserved.Category eBook Readers | Tags: Alliance,Boston,contract,Drivers,Occupy,School | No Comments
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When New Obama Chief of Staff Was NYU Exec, School Ceased Recognizing Union
January 19, 2012 by admin
by Josh Eidelson
T
President Barack Obama shakes hands with newly-appointed White Residence Chief of Staff Jacob J. Lew, acting as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State on June 3, 2010. (White House photo/Public Domain)
Three months into a bitter strike, the Graduate Students Organizing Committee sent an e-mail to supporters. “Like their refusal to bargain, their threats last fall, and the docking of potential pay out for striking,” the union wrote, “John Sexton and the NYU administration, aided by former Clintonites Jacob Lew and Cheryl Mills, are once again hiding behind a appropriate-wing, Republican NLRB.”
Six a long time, later on, Lew and Mills are back in Washington. Mills is Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff at the State Department. Lew reprised his Clinton Administration function as director of the Office of Management and Budget—until last week, when Obama promoted him to White Residence Chief of Staff.
In 2004, Jacob Lew was the first hire by newly-appointed New York University President John Sexton. Lew served as NYU’s chief operating officer and executive vice president for the following two a long time, throughout which NYU withdrew recognition from its graduate student employees union and punished some participants in the ensuing strike. UAW Nearby 2110 President Maida Rosenstein, whose nearby consists of GSOC, says Lew was “the point person” in “representing management’s position” against the union. (Full disclosure: the UAW is an In These Times sponsor)“Every single ruthless tactic from the playbook of union-busting was followed at NYU,” says NYU Professor Andrew Ross. Ross co-edited The University Against Itself, an anthology on the strike.
A White Residence spokesperson directed an inquiry to OMB Communications Director Kenneth Baer, who e-mailed, “Throughout his career, Jack Lew has been a strong supporter of the correct of workers to organize – as has the President. And that belief will not modify in his new role as Chief of Staff.” Baer declined additional comment.
Spokespeople for the AFL-CIO and for the UAW International Union each declined to comment on Lew’s promotion.
Quickly after Lew joined NYU in 2004, a Bush-appointed majority on the National Labor Relations Board issued its Brown University selection denying graduate student teachers the proper to union recognition. That was a reversal of a Clinton-appointed majority’s NYU decision, which 4 years earlier had declared for the very first time that graduate student staff have been employees covered under the National Labor Relations Act (in the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton each co-sponsored legislation to restore graduate student employees’ rights).
(Full disclosure: My former employer, UNITE Right here, has an organizing campaign amid Yale graduate college students, which I actively supported as an undergraduate.)
GSOC had won an election in 2001 and, under Sexton’s predecessor, negotiated the very first union contract amongst a personal university and a graduate student workforce. After Brown overturned NYU in 2004, NYU was no lengthier legally essential to negotiate with GSOC – although nothing in the determination prevented it from undertaking so. With a year till GSOC’s contract would expire, NYU announced a a number of-month process of deliberation and neighborhood input over whether or not to negotiate a new 1.
On April 21, 2005, Rev. Jesse Jackson Jr. and New York City Council President Christine Quinn joined GSOC leaders outside the developing housing Sexton’s workplace demanding a meeting. Lew met them and accepted a petition from GSOC’s membership calling for NYU to return to the bargaining table.
As a substitute, in a June memo to the NYU neighborhood, Lew and Provost David McLaughlin announced a “proposed determination,” pending a 30-day comment period, that “we ought to no longer use a union as an intermediary with our students.” On August 2, NYU indicated to GSOC that it was interested instead in a “new paradigm,” below which GSOC could negotiate more than a narrowed variety of troubles, no a single could be needed to spend union representation fees, and the university (relatively than an arbitrator) would have last say on the resolution of any grievances. GSOC responded on August four by reiterating its request for sit-down negotiations.
In a memo the next day, Lew and McLaughlin informed the public that “the university will not negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement with the UAW.” Lew and McLaughlin wrote that NYU had often maintained as a “core principle” that “graduate assistants are college students, not workers,” but had accepted GSOC’s 2001 union recognition vote based mostly on “the UAW’s representation that it would respect the University’s discretion on academic matters.”
They charged that GSOC had abused the contract’s grievance process to interfere with “academic selection-producing,” and warned that “if even one particular arbitrator had sided with the UAW in any of these choices, it would have had a profound effect on our faculty’s academic rights and eventually the academic quality of the institution.”
“It is both disingenuous and risible,” American Association of University Professors President Jane Buck later retorted, “to assert that the mentoring connection is harmed by good faith negotiations about salaries, rewards, and access to fair grievance procedures.” GSOC, although defending the merits of the grievances, had provided three months earlier to drop all of them, and to incorporate language broadening management’s discretion in a new contract. (NYU did not respond to a request for comment.)
“Our membership, which had been covered by a contract that supplied all varieties of rights and rewards, lost that contract, and has had to organize from scratch,” says Rosenstein.
Following Lew and McLaughlin’s e-mail, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney joined GSOC activists in civil disobedience on August 31, the last day of their contract. In November of 2005, GSOC went on strike to win back union recognition. On its very first day, picketers held “Wanted” posters with Lew and McLaughlin’s faces. Lew informed a campus paper that “it would be a error for everyone to draw conclusions” primarily based on the initial day of the strike. “It would be wrong to say absolutely nothing is going to occur it would be incorrect to say the place is going to be paralyzed.”
In The University Against Itself, GSOC activist Susan Valentine wrote that NYU campaigned against GSOC with “classic techniques this sort of as interference from supervisors (faculty, in this case) and the threat–and fulfillment–of firings.” Several aspects of the campaign, Valentine charged, would have been illegal had workers been covered beneath the Labor Relations Act. Some faculty complained soon after discovering on the strike’s initial day that NYU administrators were logged in as “observers” on the “virtual classroom” web site Blackboard, which could be used to assess which teaching assistants have been on strike. GSOC members said they were questioned about their union activity by supervisors.
In the strike’s 3rd week, NYU issued the 1st of a series of threats that graduate college students who remained on strike would be denied perform and payment for long term semesters. Over a hundred international students sent Sexton a letter charging that this kind of threats had been placing them at chance of deportation. Throughout the first two months of 2006, twenty strikers have been fired. That spring, NYU developed a graduate student government which GSOC charged was another attempt at a “company union.”
“Suddenly the organization of the university has grow to be strikebreaking and unionbusting, not training,” wrote Cornell’s Kate Bronfenbrenner in January 2006.
The strike drew vocal assistance from significant unions, politicians, and academics. But when the strike ended in Might 2006, GSOC had not won recognition. The following month, Lew left NYU to become COO of Citigroup Worldwide Wealth Management.
Jared Bernstein, a Senior Fellow at the Center on Price range and Policy Priorities and former Chief Economist for Vice President Joe Biden, told the L.A. Occasions Friday that Lew is “a mild-mannered guy, but if you want to see him battle, put him in a place wherever he’s protecting disadvantaged men and women and he’ll go to the mat. That’s one thing you don’t see enough of at that level of energy.”
Interviewed last month, GSOC activist Dacia Mitchell stated that 1 of GSOC’s main focuses considering that the strike has been electing a Democratic President who would make pro-union NLRB appointments. A week prior to Lew’s promotion to Chief of Staff, GSOC received welcome news from the White House when Obama produced 3 recess appointments to the NLRB, averting a shutdown of the agency and raising hopes that the Labor Board will rule on a new election petition filed by GSOC in 2010 and restore the NYU precedent. Rosenstein, who was energetic in the GSOC campaign, says Obama “has in common been very supportive of our union, and labor in general.”
Concerning the Lew nomination, Rosenstein says, “That’s Washington politics. A absolutely distinct function. I have no notion regardless of whether he’ll be a excellent chief of staff or not.” Asked whether Lew’s function in NYU’s campaign against her union should have been disqualifying, Rosenstein responds, “I would really like it if he had a Chief of Staff who had a immediate historical past of being really pro-union. But he was in charge of the spending budget at NYU. Inside of that context, he did what he did. Possibly he’s discovered one thing from it.”
Josh Eidelson is a freelance writer and a contributor at In These Occasions, The American Prospect, Dissent, and Alternet. After getting his MA in Political Science, he worked as a union organizer for 5 many years. This report initially appeared on the Operating In These Occasions blog. His website is http://www.josheidelson.com.
Category Technology | Tags: Ceased,Chief,Exec,Obama,Recognizing,School,Staff,Union | No Comments
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Increased Reliance on “Guest Worker” Programs
January 19, 2012 by admin
By David Bacon
Americas PlanEditor’s Note: This is the second installment of a 3-part series on migrant rights by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This write-up is taken from the report “Displaced, Unequal and Criminalized – Fighting for the Rights of Migrants in the United States” that examines the origins of the current migratory labor phenomenon, the mechanisms that maintain it, and proposals for a much more equitable technique. The Americas Plan is proud to publish this series in collaboration with the writer. Excerpts.
More than the final 25 years, guest worker applications have increasingly turn out to be a car for channeling the migration that has stemmed from cost-free market place reforms. Rising numbers of guest employees are recruited every single year for labor in the U.S. from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean underneath the H1-B, H2-A and H2-B programs. Recruiters promise high wages and charge 1000′s of dollars for visas, fees and transportation. By the time they leave home, the debts of guest workers are crushing.
..In 2006 Santiago Rafael Cruz, an organizer for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, was murdered when the union tried to set up an workplace in Mexico to end the corruption and abuse by guest worker contractors.
If workers protest their treatment, they’re place on a blacklist and won’t be hired the following year. Protesting wouldn’t do much good anyway. Prior to the present administration, the U.S. Division of Labor almost in no way decertified a guest worker contractor, no matter how many complaints were filed against it. The paper business depends on this system. Twenty many years ago, it stopped hiring unemployed workers domestically, and began recruiting guest employees. As a outcome, labor fees in the forests have remained flat, although paper earnings have gone up.
U.S. guest worker plans in basic are just one component of a considerably larger, world-wide program, which generates labor and then puts it to use. In Latin America, financial reforms promoted by the U.S. government via trade agreements and international monetary institutions displace employees, from miners to coffee pickers. They then join a massive flood of labor moving north. When they arrive in the U.S., they grow to be an indispensable portion of the workforce, whether they are undocumented or laboring under perform visas. Displacement produces a mobile workforce, an army of accessible workers that has turn out to be an indispensable element of the U.S. economy, and that of wealthy nations like it. The identical program that generates migration needs and utilizes that labor.
Nowadays displacement and inequality are as deeply ingrained in the free market place economic system as they have been throughout the slave trade. Mexican President Felipe Calderon said for the duration of a 2008 visit to California, “You have two economies. One particular economic system is intensive in capital, which is the American economy. A single economic system is intensive in labor, which is the Mexican economy. We are two complementary economies, and that phenomenon is extremely hard to quit.” When Calderon says intensive in labor, he means that millions of Mexican citizens are being displaced, and that the nation’s economic system can’t generate employment for them. To Calderon and employers on the two sides of the U.S./Mexico border, migration is therefore a labor supply system.
Labor Plans and Higher Enforcement – The Corporate Agenda on Immigration
The meatpacking industry began lobbying for guest employees in the late 1990s, when firms organized the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition – companies like Wal-Mart, Marriott, Tyson Foods and the Related Builders and Contractors. While Republicans are powerful guest worker supporters, the proposals in Congress are bipartisan, supported by liberals like Senator Edward Kennedy and Congressman Luis Gutierrez.
New guest worker applications are the heart of the corporate program for immigration reform, and are mixed with proposals for enhanced enforcement and a pro-employer plan for legalization of the undocumented. Guest worker proposals, sophisticated now even at the negotiations of the World Trade Organization, have two qualities. They permit employers to recruit labor in one particular nation and place it to use in another, and they tie the capacity of employees to keep in their new country to their employment standing. If they aren’t functioning, they have no proper to remain. These inevitably lead to a distinct social, political and economic status, in which workers don’t have the very same rights as individuals close to them, and can’t obtain the exact same social rewards.
David Bacon is a writer and photojournalist primarily based in Oakland and Berkeley, California. He has been a reporter and documentary photographer for 18 years, shooting for a lot of nationwide publications. He has exhibited his perform nationally, and in Mexico, the UK and Germany. Bacon addresses issues of labor, immigration and worldwide politics and is an associate editor at Pacific News Service and a regular contributor to the Americas Plan.
The report “Displaced, Unequal and Criminalized – Fighting for the Rights of Migrants in the United States” was prepared for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
See the whole series right here. http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6067
Category Talking Readers | Tags: Increased,Programs,Reliance,Worker,“Guest | No Comments
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Increased Reliance on “Guest Worker” Programs
January 19, 2012 by admin
By David Bacon
Americas ProgramEditor’s Note: This is the second installment of a three-part series on migrant rights by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article is taken from the report “Displaced, Unequal and Criminalized – Fighting for the Rights of Migrants in the United States” that examines the origins of the current migratory labor phenomenon, the mechanisms that maintain it, and proposals for a more equitable system. The Americas Program is proud to publish this series in collaboration with the author. Excerpts.
Over the last 25 years, guest worker programs have increasingly become a vehicle for channeling the migration that has stemmed from free market reforms. Increasing numbers of guest workers are recruited each year for labor in the U.S. from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean under the H1-B, H2-A and H2-B programs. Recruiters promise high wages and charge thousands of dollars for visas, fees and transportation. By the time they leave home, the debts of guest workers are crushing.
..In 2006 Santiago Rafael Cruz, an organizer for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, was murdered when the union tried to set up an office in Mexico to end the corruption and abuse by guest worker contractors.
If workers protest their treatment, they’re put on a blacklist and won’t be hired the following year. Protesting wouldn’t do much good anyway. Prior to the current administration, the U.S. Department of Labor almost never decertified a guest worker contractor, no matter how many complaints were filed against it. The paper industry depends on this system. Twenty years ago, it stopped hiring unemployed workers domestically, and began recruiting guest workers. As a result, labor costs in the forests have remained flat, while paper profits have gone up.
U.S. guest worker programs in general are just one part of a much larger, global system, which produces labor and then puts it to use. In Latin America, economic reforms promoted by the U.S. government through trade agreements and international financial institutions displace workers, from miners to coffee pickers. They then join a huge flood of labor moving north. When they arrive in the U.S., they become an indispensable part of the workforce, whether they are undocumented or laboring under work visas. Displacement creates a mobile workforce, an army of available workers that has become an indispensable part of the U.S. economy, and that of wealthy countries like it. The same system that produces migration needs and uses that labor.
Today displacement and inequality are as deeply ingrained in the free market economy as they were during the slave trade. Mexican President Felipe Calderon said during a 2008 visit to California, “You have two economies. One economy is intensive in capital, which is the American economy. One economy is intensive in labor, which is the Mexican economy. We are two complementary economies, and that phenomenon is impossible to stop.” When Calderon says intensive in labor, he means that millions of Mexican citizens are being displaced, and that the country’s economy can’t produce employment for them. To Calderon and employers on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, migration is therefore a labor supply system.
Labor Programs and Greater Enforcement – The Corporate Agenda on Immigration
The meatpacking industry started lobbying for guest workers in the late 1990s, when companies organized the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition – corporations like Wal-Mart, Marriott, Tyson Foods and the Associated Builders and Contractors. While Republicans are strong guest worker supporters, the proposals in Congress are bipartisan, supported by liberals like Senator Edward Kennedy and Congressman Luis Gutierrez.
New guest worker programs are the heart of the corporate program for immigration reform, and are combined with proposals for increased enforcement and a pro-employer program for legalization of the undocumented. Guest worker proposals, advanced now even at the negotiations of the World Trade Organization, have two characteristics. They allow employers to recruit labor in one country and put it to use in another, and they tie the ability of workers to stay in their new country to their employment status. If they aren’t working, they have no right to stay. These inevitably lead to a different social, political and economic status, in which workers don’t have the same rights as those around them, and can’t receive the same social benefits.
David Bacon is a writer and photojournalist based in Oakland and Berkeley, California. He has been a reporter and documentary photographer for 18 years, shooting for many national publications. He has exhibited his work nationally, and in Mexico, the UK and Germany. Bacon covers issues of labor, immigration and international politics and is an associate editor at Pacific News Service and a regular contributor to the Americas Program.
The report “Displaced, Unequal and Criminalized – Fighting for the Rights of Migrants in the United States” was prepared for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
See the entire series here. http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6067
Category Talking Readers | Tags: Increased,Programs,Reliance,Worker,“Guest | No Comments
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Environmental Groups, Unions Support President Obama’s Decision on Keystone XL Pipeline
January 19, 2012 by admin
The following news release was issued on January 18 by Communications Employees of America, SEIU, Transport Employees Union, United Vehicle Workers, United Steel Employees, Sierra Club, and the NRDC.
Washington, D.C. — The Keystone XL Pipeline is a complicated project which deserved the careful consideration regarding its environmental and economic impacts that the Obama Administration planned to provide.
In a cynical move, the Residence Republican leadership called for a rapid determination on the pipeline in exchange for agreeing to keep the payroll tax reduce in spot. The payroll tax reduce enacted final year has been an important component of efforts to turn about our struggling economic climate. Even though the House Republicans wrapped occupation creation rhetoric about their pipeline demands, they have rejected numerous opportunities to help programs generating good U.S. jobs. Right here are a handful of of the jobs initiatives proposed by the Obama administration that Republican members of Congress have rejected:
- The Residence at first voted against again extending Unemployment Insurance coverage rewards, as well as against the measure to continue the reduce in payroll taxes. If the Home action had held, the economic system would have lost one.five million jobs.
- The Republicans are blocking any consideration of the Restore the American Dream Act which would develop/preserve 2.three million jobs in 2012 and three.one million jobs in 2013 without providing any alternative that would lead to direct task creation.
- The Republicans opposed the extension of the Highway Trust Fund which would develop one hundred,000s of jobs and provide for critical infrastructure repair.
- The Residence Republicans permitted the funding for important modernization tasks for our airline infrastructure to expire, at the expense of tens of thousands of jobs, to pursue a political agenda to hold down wages and block democratic elections in the airline market, the target of one particular corporation.
- Property Republicans rejected Obama administration initiatives to fund jobs for teachers, firefighters and police, in spite of robust community support for far more responders.
A project this far-reaching deserved better than the “politics as usual” strategy of a do-practically nothing Republican Congress. Their occupation blackmail agenda is basically wedge politics.
Addressing worldwide climate adjust, establishing sustainable and secure power sources, and creating and retaining safe and household-supportive jobs are keys to a optimistic long term for our kids and grandchildren. President Obama has acted wisely.
Category eBook Readers | Tags: Decision,Environmental,Groups,Keystone,Obama’s,Pipeline,President,Support,Unions | No Comments
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Which Educational Technology Purpose(s) are served?
January 16, 2012 by admin
A number of nice Technological innovation images I located:
Which Educational Engineering Purpose(s) are served?
Picture by Wesley Fryer
I am thinking most technologies used for understanding can be categorized into three functional categories or purposes: A funnel, a ruler, and an amplifier. Most K-12 schools seem to be employing their technologies for the former two purposes, and ignoring or staying away from the latter.Panama Technologies
Picture by thinkpanama
Is Panama connected? Go through our FAQ to understand more about Panama’s engineering.Flanders Engineering Worldwide 1988
Image by FotoBart
This was Flanders Engineering International’s 1988 logo, which stuck in the minds of absolutely everyone that visited the very first tech fair (keep in mind the Rucanor Tristar any person?). Now, with Dean Kamen’s "Luke", we are lastly getting there.Category Technology | Tags: Educational,Purposes,served,Technology | 1 Comment
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Cry for “Bread & Roses” Still Resonates 100 Years After the Lawrence Strike:
January 16, 2012 by admin
by Steve Early
Textile strikers confront Massachusetts militiamen in 1912.
1 hundred years ago this week, 1000′s of angry textile workers abandoned their looms and poured into the frigid streets of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Like Occupy Wall Street in our very own gilded age, this sudden grassroots protest cast a dramatic spotlight on the dilemma of social and financial inequality. In all of American labor background, there are handful of much better examples of the synergy between radical activism and indigenous militancy.
The function stoppage now celebrated as the “Bread and Roses Strike” was triggered, ironically, by a Progressive-era reform that backfired. Well-meaning state legislators had just lowered the highest allowable working hrs for ladies and youngsters from 56 to 54 hrs per week. When this reduction went into impact, workers quickly discovered that their spend had been reduce proportionately, and their jobs speeded up by the American Woolen Business and other firms.
The strike that began on January 12, 1912 created political tremors far beyond the Merrimack Valley. The shutdown of mills in Lawrence forced a national debate about factory problems, child labor, the exploitation of immigrants, and the free of charge workout of Very first Amendment rights during labor disputes. The strikers’ appeals for solidarity and fiscal support also developed a stark “Which Side Are You On?” second for mainstream unions and middle-class reformers, both of whom had been nervous about the function played by “outside agitators” in Lawrence.
An Immigrant Uprising
On one particular side of the class divide in Lawrence have been wealthy, arrogant, and out-of-touch WASP makers. Their “1%” sense of entitlement led them to spurn negotiations with “the offscourings of Southern Europe,” as New England Magazine disdainfully called the strikers. As an alternative, mill owners relied on rough policing by fifty state and local militia units (including a business composed of Harvard college students who have been
offered program credit for their attempted strike breaking). Two workers had been shot or bayonetted to death, while a lot of other individuals were clubbed and jailed. Three union organizers were falsely accused of conspiracy to murder and faced the electrical chair ahead of their post-strike acquittal.Arrayed against American Woolen and its heavily armed defenders was a rainbow coalition of lately arrived immigrants—low-paid employees from 30 nations, who spoke 45 different languages. They were welded with each other into a militant, disciplined, and largely non-violent force, via their very own efforts and the extraordinary organizing competencies of the Industrial Workers of the Globe (IWW), which began recruiting in Lawrence a lot of months just before the nine-week walkout.
In contrast to, the elitist and conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL), the IWW championed the functioning poor, the two native- and foreign-born. “There is no foreigner right here except the capitalists,” thundered IWW leader “Big Bill” Haywood, in a speech to the Lawrence strikers. “Do not let them divide you by sex, colour, creed or nationality.”
Many on the picket-lines in Lawrence had been teen-agers or girls. Their mistreatment at operate, miserable living conditions, malnutrition, and other well being problems quickly became a national scandal. When a delegation of sixteen youthful strikers appeared just before a House Committee hearing in Washington D.C, the wife of Republican President William Howard Taft was amongst these attending who have been shocked by their account of factory existence in Lawrence. These little one laborers put a human encounter on the strikers’ now popular demand for “bread and roses.” They wished far more than just a residing wage they sought dignity, respect, and opportunities for personalized fulfillment denied to these employed in the mills at age 14 or even younger.
IWW vs. AFL
Today, the “Bread and Roses Strike” is feted by all of organized labor. But, at the time, the work stoppage upstaged and embarrassed the American Federation of Labor, due to the fact Lawrence workers rallied below the banner of an organizational rival. IWW members fiercely criticized the AFL for retaining employees divided in diverse unions, based on occupation. Women, non-whites, and modern immigrants—particularly individuals deemed to be “un-skilled”—were largely excluded from the alliance of craft unions derided by the IWW as “the American Separation of Labor.” The AFL, in turn, dismissed the IWW’s quest for “One Large Union” and worker management of industry as a left-wing fantasy.
AFL President Samuel Gompers was particularly grumpy about the Lawrence strike. Like individuals who dissed Occupy Wall Street final Fall, Gompers claimed the textile labor uprising was just “a passing event”–the work of people much more concerned with promoting a “class conscious industrial revolution” than advancing “the near long term interests of the employees.” When the mill owners finally capitulated, however, strikers won most of their instant demands—an outcome that vindicated their embrace of the IWW relatively than the feeble AFL-affiliated United Textile Employees. The strike settlement, reached in March of 1912, supplied wage increases, over-time pay out, and amnesty for 20,000 strikers.
On the other hand, as numerous labor historians have noted, the IWW’s political influence in Lawrence proved to be brief-lived. Industrial unionism didn’t gain a firmer footing in the Merrimack Valley till the 1930s and the fantastic wave of Depression-inspired organizing by the Congress of Industrial Organizations. But even that later labor movement accomplishment was eroded above time by capital flight– mill closings and the relocation of textile manufacturing from New England to the non-union south. The Merrimack Valley entered a period of steady decline.
Lawrence, Then and Now
In modern years, nevertheless, Lawrence’s lengthy depressed neighbor to the west, the city of Lowell, has experienced an financial revival, due to public investment in greater education there, a convention center, and other facilities it is now extensively hailed as a model of mill town re-invention and cultural diversity. Visitors flock to its museum of industrial background, run by the National Park Service.
Lawrence remains a city of the operating poor, far better identified for its sub-common housing, high unemployment, political corruption, and troublesome street crime. Ninety percent of its public college college students are Hispanic and handful of speak English as a initial language. Even though not condemned to factory perform at an early age, these young children struggle to discover beneath tenement-like conditions. A current report by the teachers’ union describes “crowded classrooms and physical infrastructure in distress: leaking roofs, poor air good quality, persistent mold problems, crumbling walls and rodent infestation.” Demoralized teachers have been functioning without having a new contract for two a long time student performance is so dismal that a state take-over the college method has been actively deemed.
When worker solidarity prevailed over corporate energy in the icy streets of Lawrence a century ago, it made the guarantee of a better life actual for several. The Bread and Roses strike became a consciousness-raising knowledge, not only for textile employees and their households, but the nation as a complete. Nevertheless, at centennial occasions in Lawrence more than the up coming numerous months, (seehttp://breadandrosescentennial.org/), it will be tough not to notice that numerous immigrant employees there nonetheless lack “bread and roses”—in the form of living wage jobs, reasonably priced housing, and far better schools.
But that injustice will not be cured till U.S. employees and their allies, in Lawrence and elsewhere, locate a way to make background yet again, not just celebrate it.
Steve Early is a former national staff member of the Communications Employees of America (CWA) who has been energetic in labor causes since 1972. He is the author of The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor (Haymarket Books, 2010) and a contributor to Wisconsin Uprising: Labor Fights Back, now readily available from Month to month Critique Press. A diverse edition of this article appeared in The Boston Globe, January 11, 2012.
Category Talking Readers | Tags: After,Lawrence,Resonates,Roses”,Still,Strike,Years,“Bread | No Comments
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Migration – a product of “Free Market” Reforms
January 16, 2012 by admin
By Duane Campbell
Labor journalist and photo journalist David Bacon is a frequent contributor to Talking Union. In a new 3 component series, “Migration- a item of Cost-free Marketplace Reforms” he describes the displacement of some 500,000 people from Oaxaca, Mexico. Most to the fields of California.
David Bacon
“It is the fiscal crashes and the economic disasters that drive men and women to perform for dollars in the U.S., to change existence financial savings, or just to earn enough to keep their household at property with each other,” says Harvard historian John Womack. “The debt-induced crash in the 1980s, before NAFTA, drove men and women north…The economic crash and the Rubin-induced reform of NAFTA, New York’s economic expropriation of Mexican finances among 1995 and 2000, drove the economically wrecked, dispossessed and impoverished north again.”
The U.S. immigration debate has no vocabulary that describes what occurs to migrants before they cross borders – the factors that force them into movement. In the U.S. political debate, Veracruz’s uprooted coffee pickers or unemployed employees from Mexico City are referred to as immigrants, because that debate doesn’t recognize their existence prior to they leave Mexico. It would be far more accurate to get in touch with them migrants, and the approach migration, since that takes into account each people’s communities of origin and people where they travel to come across work.
Displacement itself becomes an unmentionable word in the Washington discourse. Not one particular immigration proposal in Congress in the quarter century considering that IRCA was passed tried to come to grips with the policies that uprooted miners, teachers, tree planters and farmers, in spite of the fact that Congress members voted for these policies. In simple fact, while debating expenses to criminalize undocumented migrants and set up huge guest worker applications, 4 new trade agreements have been introduced, every single of which would result in more displacement and much more migration.
Go through the whole piece here.
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6038
The dominant economic policy in the U.S. is called neo-liberalism. We have two strands of neo liberalism- the moderates in the Democratic Celebration and the fundamentalists in the Republican Get together. There is a tiny section of the Democratic Celebration, about 100 votes in Congress, who recognize the discomfort and failure of this policy.
 
Neo liberalism is the ideology of corporate capitalism considering that about 1970 and continuing into the present. For illustration, it was the organizing ideology of the coup and government of Pinochet in Chile. It could also be termed fundamentalist capitalism.
As socialists we fight against their ideology because their method causes too a lot suffering, unnecessary poverty for millions and also significantly death. We provide options that stress social cooperation, the improvement of all of the individuals rather than a few and a good normal of living for all.
The objective of neoliberalism is a state that enforces cut backs, austerity, outsourcing, privatization and waging a race to the bottom above labor charges. Capitalism makes use of states to impose their rules, their austerity applications, and their wars. Our first project is to oppose neoliberalism proper right here in the U.S.A.
We, in DSA, are difficult capital via fighting for its opposite: expanded trade union rights, fair trade above free trade, controlling and regulating monetary markets so they have limited ability to loot the society fighting foreclosures, maintaining and expanding public schooling, demanding debt forgiveness, pushing for renewable power sources. In portion we pursue these goals by nationalizing the banks and shrinking the military so it can’t be a weapon used against progressive foreign insurgencies. We seek out to develop a democratic foreign policy that stops the military–public and personal– from being an arm of capital, a car for the suppression of well-liked and democratic movements of resistance to capitalist exploitation.
 
 
 
Category eBook Readers | Tags: Free,Market”,Migration,product,Reforms | No Comments
