July 30, 2005
birds know it bees know it...
even
hackademics with degrees know it ....
"It’s time
to call for
real
job site democracy"
jobakazee ?
no
but
not
shabby either .....
=============================
and hey
this was posted
on the pie's
official
federation web site:
here's the bulge of it ....
"On the job
wage lings
are not free
to exercise
their full
civil rights
under the First Amendment
to have a say
what they please
about the conditions
under which they labor
Every day
in a nation
that is supposed to be
“of the people,
by the people,
and for the people,”
tens of millions of Americans
spend
their prime waking hours
under the thumb
of one
or another
toad stool tyranny "
amen
brother brain fuzzy
amen
==============================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
09:14 PM
|
Comments (0)
"rapid return " .... vapid refrain
this is international progress?
the convention ends
with
the stinky
sodomy center
still standing tall
and chief little george
gets
this sweet pea
water color
warning :
" pull our troopers
out
of eye-rack
and make it... errrh
kinda
sorta
near as possible
to snappy
or we'll aah...
ummmh
well.....
just you better not
wait and see "
--------------------------------------
where's chig ???
we gotta make
an obscene public gesture here
what
a putrid fricking
fuckle buck
=====================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
08:38 PM
|
Comments (0)
fletcher's ponderations
here's a few think pots ....
i'll comment later
return here in two days
=====================================
* What is our analysis of the current
domestic and
international situation in general
but specifically,
the situation facing workers?
* What changes in the economy
and in the process of
work have taken place
that affect workers, but also
affect our abilities to organize, mobilize, and be
effective?
* How do we understand
the evolution of the U.S.
political state?
What does this mean for workers and
their unions?
* What do we mean
when we speak of power for workers?
* What other social movements,
whether progressive or
reactionary, are rising or declining?
* How have U.S.unions practiced
trade unionism over the last fifty
years?
In what manner were there changes
if any at all
in this practice
after Sweeney took over in 1995?
* What has worked
and what has not
in the last ten
years?
Do we have any idea as to why?
* What do we need
from a federation of unions?
Specifically:
How should it make decisions?
Who should
be included?
What is its role in electoral politics
and legislation?
What is its role in organizing?
What is its role
in member education and mobilization?
* How do we change
power relations
in the United
States?
What does this mean
at the national and local
level?
* What is the nature
of international working class
solidarity
in the twenty-firstt century?
* What are
the organizational and structural
implications
of all of this
for the union movement?
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
08:24 PM
|
Comments (0)
target talk
there's never enough target talk ...
here's some uncaged beauties
===================================
" Wal-Mart Stores
The largest private-sector employer
in the country with 1.3
million employees,
Unions have won the right
to hold organizing votes
at only a
few Wal-Mart locations.
The only time
that a union won
a vote
was in 2000 --
10 butchers signed on
for representation at a
Jacksonville, Texas store.
Two weeks later,
Wal-Mart got rid
of all its butcher operations
Most recently, in February,
Wal-Marttire and lube shop
employees in Loveland, Colo.,
and New Castle, Pa.,
voted
against representation.
At this point,
the union efforts at Wal-Mart
are focused on
building community pressure
rather than getting employees
to
sign union cards,
lead union
the United
Food and Commercial Workers union,
one of the CTW insurgents
"There is no way WE can put a time line
on when this or that
will happen,"
Wal-Mart says
its nationwide average hourly
pay for
full-time employees
is $9.68
The United Food and
Commercial Workers union
argues the rate averages
only $8.23
( estimates
SUGGEST
the average
hourly wage
for all
non-supervisory retail employees
nationwide is AROUND
$12.50)
------------------------------------
" FedEx
FedEx is essentially
a non-union company,
with
only its pilots
represented by a union.
Its competitors are mostly unionized
United Parcel Service
and old-line trucking companies
such as Yellow
Corp.
both represented
by the Teamsters union,
of course
U.S. Postal Service
is fully unionized.
The unions have an extra hurdle
in attempting to organize
FedEx,
express carriers operate
under
different labor law
than most companies.
Under that law,
a union must win a vote
of all FedEx
employees
in certain job classification
such as delivery
driver
or package sorter
rather than trying to win a series
of votes at specific facilities
FedEx Express
its core overnight operation
has about
139,000 employees
the overwhelming majority
in the United
States."
--------------------
" Verizon Wireless
Unions have very good representation
within the traditional
land-line phone companies
. But they have been
much slower
making inroads among providers
of wireless communications.
One success story for the unions
is Cingular Wireless
the nation's largest wireless
provider.
Out of 63,300
U.S. employees,
Cingular has almost 22,000 workers
represented by
the Communications Workers of America.
Unions have not had
much luck at Verizon Wireless
which has nearly 50,000 employees."
------------------------------------
Toyota, Honda or
Nissan
Today, Japanese automakers
have 25 plants in North America,
employing about 56,000 employees,
and more are planned.
Korean and European automakers
also are opening U.S. plants,
and production from all plants
operated by non-U.S. companies
account for almost as much output
as General Motors
and more than either
Ford Motor Co
or
Chrysler Group
But most of those plants are non-union.
With the Big Three
looking to shrink capacity
and trim staff,
it is essential
for the United Auto Workers
to make a
breakthrough
with these so-called
"transplants" assembly
plants.
So far it has come up empty,
losing a vote at a Nissan plant
in Smyrna, Tenn. in October 2001."
--------------------------
"Comcast
Comcast
the nation's largest cable operator
is
primarily non-union.
But the Communications Workers
of
America
is making a concerted effort
at a number of Comcast
locations around the nation.
The company has about 59,000 employees
in its cable and
Internet operations.
Comcast says that unions represent
about 1,500 of those
employees,
down from 3,600
when the company completed its
purchase of AT&T Cable in 2002.
While the union has been holding
organizing elections,
Comcast has been pushing for
union decertification elections
during the same period."
---------------------------
"IBM
The CWA also has an effort at IBM
that got its
start when the computer maker
announced plans
to change its
pension plans
in 1999 from a traditional plan
that paid a fix
amount per month
as long as a retiree lived
to one thatpaid
a lump sum.
But after IBM made some changes
to answer criticisms
of that
shift,
some of the union efforts
there calmed down,"
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
07:54 PM
|
Comments (0)
CTW: think yer so tough? .
then go get yourselves arrested
------------------------------------------
u can file the above under
"not bloody likely
any time soon"
=======================================================
take this well struck note
as
a for instance
" Change to Win has hired
55 public relations specialists
and
appointed as its executive director
Greg Tarpinian
Greg iz a lifetime flack
who's made a career
of "consulting"
for some of the Teamsters'
most calcified old guard.....
it's hard to talk about
any of this challenging
the status quo
with a straight face"
JOANN WYPIJEWSKI
=========================================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
02:26 PM
|
Comments (0)
bene rip hardly ready to roar
"i'll take the slow death"
investigate investigate.....
avoid
idealist errors......
=================================================
job market still in the dum dum tank
". The Labor Department's employment cost index report
a measure that includes
wages, salaries
and employers' contributions
to pensions,
health insurance
and other benefits
rose 3.2 percent
over the past year
the smallest increase
since 2000 "
"The slowdown partly reflects
very low growth
in wages and salaries.....
which rose only 2.4 percent
in the year that ended in June.."
"that's the smallest gain
recorded
since
the government began collecting
such information
in early 1982"
--------- there's a nice number
right off the bottom
of the fucking chart --------------
"But it also reflects reduced growth
in benefit costs
as many employers
have cut their pension contributions
and shifted more health insurance expenses
to their employees"
" Many companies have also trimmed
their benefit expenses
by using more contract labor"
" Benefit costs rose 5.1 percent
in the year that ended in June
the smallest yearly increase
since late 2002"
---------------
hardly a house a fire here
so iz
a corporate bene
rip roar under way??
....not yet gang
if ever
maybe a long whimper first ------------------
------------
note however :
the relative growth rates
of benes vs wages
may be evening down ...----------
"Benefit costs
rose just 0.8 percent
in the second quarter
Wages and salaries
rose 0.6 percent "
================================================================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
08:36 AM
|
Comments (0)
July 29, 2005
ten million new ameri-teen job stakes
how about that
stake em all to a starter job
" its a family value
program "
============================
10,000,000 full and part time jobs
for raw folks 16-19 years old
right now only 5 million of em have jobs
lets job up the other 10 mill
"while they go to school herb?"
yup
while some of do anyway
-------------------
soak em all up
daycare
street and park clean ups
community patrols
fair deal
store investigations
pay?
10-15 dollars an hour
lets
spoil em all
take tolerating
future
super chump wage rates
right off the table
cost to uncle ?
at least
100 billion dollars
if not 200 billion
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
08:40 PM
|
Comments (0)
gentlemen start your scrap-in
finally
some signs of action
and
right here in sunny southern cal too......
hey
when its union agin union
one vampin' to cadge some members from the other...
no matter what happens
shit
rankers always win
u can look it up
===========================
today's best ink blot:
" One flashpoint is SEIU's petition
for
an election to represent homecare workers
in Riverside
County, California,
who are now in an AFSCME
local
An umpire had recently determined
that under
AFL-CIO rules,
AFSCME had the right to represent
those
workers.
But on the day after
the SEIU disaffiliated,
its
president, Andy Stern,
notified the public authorities
in
Riverside
that since it was no longer bound
by those rules,
the SEIU wanted to proceed
with a petition to overturn
AFSCME's union status.
(SEIU says
that local leaders
requested a switch
in union affiliation;
AFSCME says
it
removed those officers
for financial improprieties.)
Although AFSCME has been trying
to negotiate a no-raid
agreement with SEIU,
some AFSCME leaders
are ready not only
to resist the "raid"
but to retaliate
by trying to take away
units from SEIU"
hot dog
some action
now if
a few purple waver
high pies
can just get themselves
arrested
for
"furtherin' the cause "
------------------
but from the other end
of the drain pipe comes this
"The situation seems
to be moving in a very
negative way,"
sez John Sweeney
"There
are indications SEIU
will raid AFSCME aggressively."
" if
AFSCME and others go after SEIU locals,
there could be an
all-out war......."
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
08:10 PM
|
Comments (0)
CAFTA 'S JACK ASS 15
"Melissa Bean of Illinois,
Jim Cooper of Tennessee,
Henry Cuellar of Texas,
Norm Dicks of Washington,
Ruben Hinojosa of Texas,
William Jefferson of Louisiana,
Jim Matheson of Utah,
Gregory Meeks of New York,
Dennis Moore of Kansas,
Jim Moran of Virginia,
Solomon Ortiz of Texas,
Ike Skelton of Missouri,
Vic Snyder of Arkansas,
John Tanner of Tennessee,
Edolphus Towns of New York
" on the wrong side of
klass history
so lets bust em all in '06
by whatever means necessary "
"better a certified
out of the closet
wall street dumbo
then a yellow moon
jack ass "
==========================================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
02:49 PM
|
Comments (0)
" stones and serpents "
the grack man
posts up bible type firepower
example
big bizz's gub
is shellin out
( to uz little guys)
nothin but
" stones and serpents"
===============================================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
09:50 AM
|
Comments (0)
July 28, 2005
blackball.com
don't think there is one?
just an urban myth?
wrong brothers and sisters
==================================
over the last ten years or so
a massive list of salts
has been compiled
on the basis
when in doubt
better not chance it
ie
if some one
in the loop reports
a salt SS#
to black ball
no member corporation
will ever hire same salt.....
ever
----------------------------------------------------------
jobakazee
kommando kai six
tells me
the only proper dodge :
" each go in -
u wear
a brand new digital kisser "
hey
who ever told uz
the towers
weren't gettin ready
to rumble
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
03:13 PM
|
Comments (0)
andy hits a single
" national cleaning service ABM
pays its Houston janitors
an average of only $5.25 per hour
with no benefits
But in cities where janitors
have a union
ABM provides benefits
and pays janitors
over $10 an hour"
worth dues to a rep
to get that diff ?
seems likely to me
==========================================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
11:31 AM
|
Comments (0)
July 22, 2005
what are u saying andy ?
Stern:
" The working-class consciousness
of the middle of the last century
is gone"
" not just in the United States
but also around the world"
"the great social movements
that drew our country
in a different direction
are all blowing less forcefully"
===========================================
and so
in these dim
disheveled
desultory
doldrummy times
"We have to
do our job first
in order to be
in a position
to help
to build broader movements
for social change"
"
when and if they come... ?
t'is it godot andy ?
" If growth
happens in spurts"
if ?
look at the record
bub
short "spurts" and long lulls
thats been the name
for
durable union org growth
" we need to be prepared
to take advantage
and create opportunities
for those spurts
in growth to occur"
interesting
spurts in mass movement
cause spurts in unionization?
it needs a bottom up boost
andy ?
you're just like the guy
buildin the cisterns
to catch the rain fall
not the driller after springs
just waiting to bubble up
hhhmmm
i will revisit this later tonite
-------------------------
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
02:50 PM
|
Comments (0)
doctor Org-ism speaks
" FOR LABOR
LEADERS
TO MIMIC
THE ACTIONS
THE MIND SETS
AND
EVEN THE BUZZ WORDS
OF
THE VENAL EXECUTIVES
ON THE OTHER SIDE...
THE VERY FELLAHS
RUNNING
THE FOR PROFIT
CORPORATIONS
THE ASS HOLES
THEY INTEND TO BEST
IN THE KLASS STRUGGLE
WELL LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
OF THE JURY
THIS
IS A MOST HIDEOUS
AND VICIOUS TRAVESTY.... "
===================================================
NOT BAD STUFFY STUFF EH?
HERE'S MORE
" REAL
LABOR UNION'S
AND
THEIR COUNTERPART
PROFITEER CORPORATIONS
ARE AS UNLIKE
AND
AS ASSYMETRICAL
AS ANY PAIR
OF CONTEMPORARY
ORGANIZATIONS
BUILT OUT OF
CULTURALLY
RELATED PEOPLE
CAN POSSIBLY BE ....."
" THESE TWO TYPES
OF ORGANIZATIONS
FUNCTION
AGAINST EACH OTHER
NOT LIKE
TWO ARMIES
CLASHING OVER THE SAME TERRITORY
BUT LIKE
ONE ARMY
TRYING TO PUT DOWN
AN ORGANIZED INSURGENCY "
"SO FOR CHRIST SAKE
GO OUT THERE
AND BE
THAT FUCKIN
ORGANIZED INSURGENCY "
==============================
WHO'S THIS DOC ORG-ISM ?
SHIT IF WE KNOW
HE JUST SHOWED UP
AT THE S-RANCH
ABOUT THREE WEEKS AGO
IN
A harris tweed
sport jacket
SAYING
"I'VE HAD IT WITH ACADEME
WHAT CAN DO FOR YOU?
what can
an old bag
of high price gas
like me
DO TO HELP
THE KLASS STRUGGLE
explode
like a sun flower "
SLEEVES GOD LOVE HER
NOT MISSING TWO BEATS
SEZ TO HIM
"TRY
TALKING HIGH AND DRY
BUT ACTIN DEAD DRUNK "
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
01:54 PM
|
Comments (0)
nursing a solid grudge
i wonder
if either
the in clique
of rust stack
gub flub
and monkey wrench pie cardery
in control
of the executive soviet
or
its rival
waiting in the wings
the stern hoffa gang
dares straight up
answer
this lady
of the struggle's
10 points ?
=============================================
By Rose Ann DeMoro
July 21, 2005
1. There are no real ideological disputes,
in part
because the current AFL-CIO
leadership and programs
were, mostly,
put in place
by those now challenging
them.
It appears to be
more about egos
and an effort
by
specific unions
to anoint themselves
as the group who
should control the AFL-CIO.
2. No workers
or rank and file union members
are
involved,
and it is their labor movement.
Much of the discussion
is based on recommendations
of consultants
Madison Avenue approaches
such as branding,
polling
and focus groups,
and scripted blogs,
rather than
engaging the membership
and the public
on helping shape
the future
of the labor movement.
3. No issues affecting
the majority of working
Americans
are being debated
1)declining real wages,
2)the health care crisis
3) the continued erosion
of democracy
in the workplace
4) outsourcing of jobs
across the skill
and pay spectrum
5) a deteriorating
social safety net
6) declining support
for public education
7) environmental
degradation,
8) social justice
and ongoing racial
and
gender inequality
9) alienation and disaffection
from the
political process.
4. No real solutions
to these problems are being
proposed
1) curbing corporate control
of the political
and economic system
2) single payer-universal health
care
3) a progressive tax system
that restores fair share
taxes
on corporations and wealthy individuals
4) taking
corporate money
out of politics,
5) a new industrial trade
policy,
6) a peace, not war economy
7) a strategy
for reforming repressive/crippling
labor laws and
enforcement bodies
5. The specific proposals
by the Change to Win group
are structural and bureaucratic
not programmatic
rebating union dues
forcing unions to merge
limiting the executive council
to the largest unions,
claiming sovereignty
for unions
by industry or sector
based on a union's density
in that area
There is no
evidence any of these changes
would solve labor's
problems.
6. The notion that the salvation
of the labor movement
reduces to "density as manifest destiny"
is
historically false,
and analytically shallow.
Equally,
for the unions
that are proposing the monopolistic
changes,
seemingly self serving.
Some unions that have
achieved density
have been decimated by corporate
sponsored political
economic
and social policies
Besides, forced mergers
are anti-democratic
and could
silence the voice
of the most active and militant
unions and union leaders
7. If the issue of organizing
was simply dues rebates
we could all rest easy
But that notion is painfully
oversimplified
Some unions
in and out
of the Change to Win unions
are organizing
within the current structure
others have not organized for years
Even if the AFL-
CIO paid per capita
to some of these unions
they still
would not
or could not organize
And forcing mergers is
not synonymous with organizing
and in fact could
silence the voice
of the most active
and militant
unions and union leaders
who are fundamental in
building this labor movement
8. Perhaps because
the corporate right
is so extreme,
some 'progressive' analysts
have been portraying
the dues rebates
and proposed forced mergers
as core
issues.
But more troublesome
are those pundits
who
write glowingly
about the Change to Win group's
greater
expansion
of labor-management partnerships
with their corporate-friendly
cost savings schemes
worker speed
up programs
explicit endorsement of globalization,
deskilling
outsourcing and privatization
as Labor's
salvation
These proposals
can only serve to further
alienate
the American worker
from the labor movement
further erode labor's power
and harm
the very society wide communities
with which labor
needs to align and
nurture.
9. Limiting the executive council
to the biggest
unions
would further reduce
the influence
and voice of
women
and people of color
in labor leadership.
10. No discussion
of non-bureaucratic strategies
are
on the table
including
1) expanded coalitions
with non-labor
community religious
and environmental groups;
2) active grassroots education
and mobilization campaigns
to challenge
the corporate/far right agenda;
3) building
genuine political independence
and holding the democratic party
accountable
to worker and public interests
and serious consideration
of - imagine,
a labor party
for a labor movement.
Rose Ann DeMoro :
executive director
of the California
Nurses Association
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
01:33 PM
|
Comments (0)
July 21, 2005
rank and file cross fratz
more then ever
as the inter--union comp
righteously
heats up
trench lines
will need
heavy R & F crossing
but thats always been
a movement that needs a big action motive
like
an industry wide nation wide
wild cat
================================================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
08:56 AM
|
Comments (0)
TCC
THE TRANSPORTATION CO-ORDINATING COUNCIL
WILL HAVE A WARM UP MEET
AT THE CHICAGO CONVENTION
A TUTE-STER WILL BE PRESENT
=================================================
MISSION OF TCC :
PUT IN PLACE
THE SIGNALING NETWORK
FOR A NATIONAL FREIGHT FLOW FREEZE
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
08:48 AM
|
Comments (0)
July 16, 2005
firey eyes flaring nostrils
once again the real deal
gets a trumpet blast
cut throat competition
is the only proven
antedote to
mile high
pie cardery
================================================
recent op ed:
" Although today's feuding union factions
and most friends of organized labor
lament the competition,
history suggests
that it is essential
for the revitalization of American labor.
A labor movement in
which dueling organizations
are forced to compete for
the support of potential members
can provide workers
with the leverage necessary
to force union leaders
to
be accountable to the interests
of their members.
In a competitive environment,
a union leader who does not
deliver the goods -
higher wages,
shorter hours,
better benefits,
and improved working conditions
-risks losing
out to a more responsive rival".
"A leading law firm
that advises US employers
on
handling labor issues
recently published a report
on
the labor feud here
in which it predicted
,"For employers with unions
from both competing factions
at their facilities,
competition for better wages,
benefits and other terms
and conditions of employment
is likely."
Competition among unions
leads not only to the creation
of better options
for the already organized
rank and file,
but also
to the organization
of new industries as
unions animated by the rivalry
generate enthusiasm
among the unorganized.
Employees participating in union
representation elections
have been far more likely
to
vote for union representation
over "no union"
when the election involves
more than one union vying
for workers.
Rivalry has also forced down
initiation fees
and union dues
.When unions compete
workers win.
The 1955 merger
of the AFL and the CIO
all but
eliminated competition among unions
For nearly 50
years,
the AFL-CIO has operated
like a one-party state
There can be no more fitting way
to celebrate the anniversary
of labor's unification
than to end it."
---------- beautiful ----------------
and these guys are hackademics no less....
Jonathan Cutler is a professor
of sociology at
Wesleyan University
Thaddeus Russell is a professor
of history
atBarnard College
-----------
an example of russell's scholarship
" In 1935 Jimmy Hoffa
was hired as a business agent
by the struggling,
rough-and-tumble Local 299
in Detroit.
At the time the local had only 400 members
in good standing
and even fewer dollars
in its treasury
Constantly on the verge
of bankruptcy
and desperate to add dues-paying members
299's organizers operated in a world
that was largely unaffected
by the passage
of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935
Rather than devoting their time
to signing up workers
and petitioning for elections
with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB),
they preferred a far more effective,
two-step organizing strategy.
Working mostly within
the local cartage and automobile transport industries
, 299's business agents
approached the owner
of a firm and told him
that if he did not enroll
his employees with the union,
his trucks would be bombed.
Then, if the employer refused to capitulate,
they bombed his trucks.
In the mid-1930s the local
gained a reputation as the most violent,
lawless union in an unusually violent,
lawless city "
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
12:47 PM
|
Comments (0)
July 13, 2005
out all afl lovestonian foreign skunkery
truth commissions ?
sure but first ....
the afl-xxx needs to
set its fucking
foreign house of dirty cards
on fire
burn it all
to a crisp
like
a spanish witch
===========================
as el chig sez in a recent e mail :
" somebody better
burn that
fuckin solidarity squalidarity
ding dong house
of dirty deck of poison promises
to the ground ...
all the way to the ground
and
to the last fuckin crisp too
burn burn burn
burn it
like
you'd burn
the devils picnic basket "
===========================
but on a more
even tempered note
here's a pre convention
sum up
of a sober
Cal- State
council proposal
and its JERK- FLEX counter
by
the national leadership
aka
the sweeno-clique ....
----------------------------------
" Conflicting resolutions
on the AFL-CIO's
relations with
unions in other countries
may spark real debate
at the
federation's upcoming
convention in Chicago."
--------- lets hope it sparks more then debate -----------
"an open discussion
on international affairs
would mark
a challenge
to the AFL-CIO's foreign policy".
---- u exactly
said one substantial
mouthful there pally
the whole fucking subject
of afl foreign butt fuckin
"while wearing a union label"
has been treated
like
"cousin it's date "
for 60 years ----------
" The California state AFL-CIO
is calling on the national
federation to build
"Unity and Trust"
with workers in
other countries
through a public review
of past policy "
----- which will require
the total final and complete
destruction
of squalidarity house
and the renunciation
of all past present and future
interference
with foreign unions
of any and all
ideological "flavors "
what so ever ----------
" Supporters want the AFL-CIO
to repudiate the federations
past
involvement
in U.S. government efforts
to interfere
with the labor movements
of other countries
and even
to overthrow governments
unfriendly to U.S. business"
-------- right on
brother luv
right on ------------
"The resolution would stop
the AFL-CIO from taking funds
from the U.S. government
or from quasi-government
sources such as
the National Endowment for Democracy"
----- as a fuckin minimum -----------.
.------ watch out
gals
here comes a plug
for old
"long pipe" hirsch
(it can be skipped) --------------
"The "Unity and Trust" resolution
is the culmination
of
work
by Fred Hirsch
of Plumbers and
Pipefitters Local 393
and the South Bay Central Labor
Council (San Jose)...
Hirsch for years
has been bringing
to light
U.S. labor's undermining
of pro-labor governments
in
other countries..."
------ what ya payin this guy fred? -------------
" He was a leader
in exposing
the role
that the AFL-CIO's
American Institute for Free Labor
Development (AIFLD)
played in overthrowing elected
Chilean socialist president
Salvador Allende in 1973 "
------ that all being said
lets move on here
and we love
"the hirshable " too
though
only fred knows what he really knows
( oh hey
hirschy babe
sleeve's mom sez
" tighten this
freddie "-------------
---------------------------------
------ to continue ---------------
" Efforts to resolve differences
over a previous
"Clear the Air" resolution,
in a meeting between California
AFL-CIO leaders
and leaders of the AFL-CIO
International Affairs Department,
were unsuccessful"
----------- ya cause
the national sween machine
like all its afl-xxx
predecessors
is a manchurian outfit
particularly
when it comes to.....
"foreign affairs" ------------------
" In June
the AFL-CIO exec
began
circulating their own draft
"Resolution on the Solidarity Center"
------- or
"a snow ball for kooling hell" -----------------
-------- back ground ---------
"President John Sweeney created
the Solidarity Center in 1997
to do the federation's
international work,
after dismantling the tainted AIFLD"
---------- ya and don't that show
how
evil spirits
can jump bodies
and shape shift
and flea flicker
out of scraps
and back into
the drivers seat
of any new sedan ----------------------
" The sweeney resolution
calls on
central labor councils
and
state federations
to work with the Solidarity Center
and for the Center
to continue its work "
----- stop here
the lines drawn
no way can that spook house
"continue " -----------
----as if thats not enough
heres an added
in yer face bit -------------
" the sweeney draft
also
refers specifically
to U.S. government funding:
"Whereas the AFL-CIO lobbies
for continued government
funds to strengthen trade unions
and protect the right
to freedom of association..."
----- line oughta be
" okay sween
how ya want it?
whereas
the sodomy house goes first
or whereas
you go first " ----------
------------- the octopusssy's garden ----------------
" The Solidarity Center
has operations in 40 countries,
the details of which are unknown
to most union members"
---------- nice statement -------------
-------- and by contrast ------------
" The "Unity and Trust" resolution
should cause plenty
of
embarrassment
to U.S. trade union leaders
who would
rather forget the past
since
it calls
not for an idle
review of history
but for a purge
of past practices
in
order to prevent
their recurrence in the future"
----------one example of which is ....--------
"After the 1964 military coup
in Brazil,
which led to a
brutal 12-year dictatorship,
an AIFLD Social Projects
Director told Congress,
"What happened in Brazil on
April 1 did not just happen,
it was planned
and planned
months in advance.
Many of the trade union leaders
some
of whom were actually trained
in our institute
were
involved in the revolution
and overthrow of the Goulart
regime."
------- vintage lovestone blue meany -------------
" These are the kinds
of things
that trade unionists
of
the affected countries
do not forget
even if unionists
in the U.S. would rather do so"
----- another nice point ---------------
-------- then here comes the squashy part -------------
"Countries like South Africa
have organized Truth
Commissions
to review their painful history
and help
set their future course
The AFL-CIO should do the
same "
-------- i prefer a prole
style
auto de fe ------------
----- this piece was written
by
one
Jeff Crosby ------------
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
03:38 PM
|
Comments (0)
July 11, 2005
creation economy sweat shop studio
too much exploiting
is never
cheap skate enough
====================================
"LOS ANGELES, July 10 - A lawsuit filed last week
against producers and broadcasters
of reality television shows
accused those companies
including ABC, CBS and the WB
of planning to falsify payroll records
of employees to avoid paying wages for overtime.
The lawsuit, filed on July 7
in Los Angeles Superior Court,
seeks class-action status
and is part of a broader effort
by the Writers Guild of America, West,
to organize nearly 1,000 workers
who edit and produce
the reality programs.
The union says the workers toil
lengthy schedules for dismal wages
with no health or pension benefits,
unlike counterparts on scripted television shows.
"Once hired, plaintiffs were required
to falsify their time cards,
either by simply writing the term
'Worked' across a weekly time card
or by entering predetermined start
and end times for each day of the week,"
the lawsuit said.
"In many instances, defendants attempted
to conceal this unlawful practice
by reflecting fictitious
overtime hours on plaintiffs' pay stubs."
The lawsuit charges breach
of California overtime law,
failure to provide itemized wage statements,
nonpayment of wages,
denial of meal periods
and record-keeping violations.
The guild has said
that this is the first in a series
of lawsuits that it plans to file
against broadcast and cable networks
and reality production companies.
"Besides being a very meritorious
lawsuit in its own regard,
the lawsuit is a way of adding
to the pressure that we're trying
to put on producers and networks,"
said Daniel Petrie Jr.,
president of the guild.
"It's a way of illustrating
that it would be better
if we had a union contract
covering these storytellers.
If this contributes to that,
that's great."
The lawsuit does not specify
the amount of damages being sought
but does cite a California labor code
that calls for $50 or $100 fines
for each initial violation,
and further fines
for violations after that.
J. Nicholas Counter,
president of the Alliance
of Motion Picture and Television Producers,
who negotiates with the unions
on other labor matters,
did not return a phone call
seeking comment.
The networks and production companies
named in the lawsuit,
which also included
Next Entertainment,
Telepictures Productions,
Syndicated Productions,
Dawn Syndicated Productions
and Turner Broadcasting,
either did not return calls
and e-mail messages seeking comment,
said through spokesmen
that they could not comment
on pending legislation
or could not be reached.
Pay stubs from the first 12 plaintiffs,
to be used as evidence in the lawsuit,
are intended to support the charge
that reality companies
failed to pay overtime.
One stub belonging to a story editor
on ABC's "The Bachelorette"
who shaped the storyline
by cutting together hundreds
of hours of videotape
showed an 84-hour work week
paid at $7.41 an hour
The week, which happened
to be the week of Christmas
in 2003,
included 40 hours of regular work time,
40 hours of overtime
and four hours of "guaranteed double time,"
the stub read
, all paid at the same rate.
Another pay stub provided
by the guild showed
a story editor worked the same
84 hours at the rate of $13.89 per hour
. The state labor code requires
paying time and a half for
between 40 and 80 hours
of work a week,
and double time for anything beyond 80 hours.
"It's a cartoonish system,"
said Troy DeVolld,
the plaintiff to whom
the second pay stub belonged.
"I started reviewing my pay stubs
and I noticed I was still being paid
at the same rate.
They left out overtime pay."
The writers, editors and segment producers
of the shows are generally paid flat rates.
So Mr. DeVolld said he earned
$1,500 a week on the sixth season
of "The Bachelor,"
for any amount of work up to 84 hours.
Another plaintiff, Christian T. Huber,
was paid $1,600 a week
to work as a story editor
on "The Will."
"But it was 12 hours a day,
7 days in row,
and we weren't paid overtime for that,"
Mr. Huber said.
"We were paid, on my paycheck,
with a flat salary based on
50 hours for the week."
Like other defendants,
Mr. DeVolld said the point of the lawsuit
was not so much about the back pay
as about fixing what he characterized as
a chaotic and unfair system.
"What's important for me
is that people understand
this isn't a vendetta against a company," he said.
"But there are these crazy overtime situations
that can be avoided with scheduling
so we can have some kind of life."
The lawsuit against eight shows,
including "The Bachelor,"
"The Bachelorette,"
"Are You Hot?"
and "The Real Gilligan's Island,"
comes as the airwaves are chockablock
with reality programming.
The genre has come to rival
traditional comedy and drama
in the ratings and on programming schedules.
But it remains a frenetic landscape
of shows that are often pitched, produced, broadcast
and sometimes canceled
within a matter of weeks,
a breakneck pace
when compared to scripted television.
Even those participating
in the lawsuit recognize
that the entertainment industry
commonly requires people to work long,
irregular hours,
without legal repercussions
for doing so.
But specialists in entertainment law
said that fact may not help
the production companies
and the networks being sued,
given the strictures
of the California labor code. "
---------- need one add even one word? ---------------
=======================================================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
09:12 AM
|
Comments (0)
July 09, 2005
border unions
try this in san diego some time
================================
"The world of the border
turns labor law on its head-old,
established legal rights
are just so much ink on paper,
and
even the decision of federal judges to enforce the law are
simply ignored. NAFTA's labor and environmental "side-
agreements" have provided no help to either labor or the
environment.
I. Industria Fronteriza
Tijuana's oldest maquiladora closed last year.
It didn't fall victim to the dreaded Chinese competition,
confounding a wave of near-hysterical alarms in south-of-
the-border newspapers, warning that the days of all Mexico's
factories were numbered. Instead, Industria Fronteriza owed
its demise to a more prosaic cause: women stopped wearing
nylons.
For almost four decades, seamstresses in this sprawling
sweatshop churned out what was once the height of haut
couture. Starting in the mid-1960s, the sleek hosiery
caressing the slim legs stalking down New York's fashion
runways passed through the rough working hands of hundreds of
Mexican women bent over machines on a sweaty, deafening
factory floor within a stone's throw of the U.S.-Mexico
border.
Given changing styles, perhaps the company's end could have
been easily predicted. Plans might have been made for easing
these veterans of needle and thread into jobs in some other
border sweatshop. Or they might have been trained to fill one
of the high-value-added positions that policy wonks insist
should, and will, replace the old labor-intensive jobs that
started the industrial gold rush here 40 years ago.
Traditional Mexican labor law would have helped the
dislocation of these seamstresses. Since the 1930s, when
radicals wrote the country's labor legislation (and made it a
model throughout Latin America), the Federal Labor Law has
called for something U.S. workers would love to have:
severance pay. A week's pay for every year at the machine
seemed only just to the reformers of that more egalitarian
age.
For today's seamstresses, a little money to pay for training
programs, some severance pay to live on and a government
interested in finding new jobs for older workers might have
made quite a difference.
Not in the world of the border. This world turns labor law on
its head - old post-revolutionary legal rights are just so
much ink on paper, and even the decisions of federal judges
to enforce the law are simply ignored.
What actually happened at Industria Fronteriza, however, is
strange even by Tijuana standards. First, workers got no
notice that the company was planning to close. In itself,
that's not unusual in a city and an industry where shops are
suddenly emptied of their machines in the dead of night,
leaving people to show up for work at the doors of a vacant
shell the following morning. Second, Industria Fronteriza
employees belonged to a pro-company charro union, whose
casual lack of concern for their welfare was the source of
many prior industrial battles. That's not unusual either.
What distinguishes the Industria Fronteriza experience,
however, is that in the spring of 2003, the company conspired
with the charro union and staged a strike against itself. The
sole purpose of the phantom strike was to provide a legal
obstacle to the implementation of the severance pay
requirement, and leave the workers with nothing. Mexican law
says that in the event of a strike, the claims of the
striking union must be satisfied before a company can close.
Since the official closure of Industria Fronteriza was a
precondition to distributing severance pay, the declared
strike stopped the compensation process in its tracks. That
was pretty extreme, even considering the long-established
practice along the border of allowing factory owners to get
away with virtually anything.
Throughout Mexico, factory owners sign "protection contracts"
with pro-government and pro-company unions, called sindicatos
charros. The phrase originally referred to unions led by Luis
Morones, a Mexican labor leader from the 1920s. Morones was
famous for dressing up like a cowboy, or charro. A notorious
conservative in the Mexican labor movement, he signed
sweetheart agreements with employers; consequently, workers
"celebrate" his memory by referring to company unions as
"charro unions." Protection contracts and charro unions are
the primary system of labor control for foreign corporations
that have built factories on the border. This system allows
them to pay extremely low wages, even by Mexican standards,
and to maintain dangerous and even illegal working
conditions, with little fear of organized worker resistance.
Jesús Campos Linas, the dean of Mexican labor lawyers, says
that thousands of such contracts in Mexico are arrangements
of mutual convenience among corrupt unions, the government
and foreign investors who own the factories. "Companies," he
explains, "make hefty regular payments to union leaders under
these contracts and in return get labor peace."
Over the two years following the closing of Industria
Fronteriza, a lawsuit by the workers ground through the
courts. Finally, four workers, who had been illegally fired
in June 2002, won a decision forcing the Tijuana Labor Board
to tell the company to collectively pay the workers $50,000
in severance. Of course, the company didn't pay, so the
workers had to get another order, this one requiring that the
board confiscate the sewing machines, industrial steam irons
and the other equipment left in the abandoned factory.
On December 7, 2004, the workers stood ready at the gate,
having come with a truck, forklifts, a lawyer from Mexico
City and supporters to carry the equipment out. They had even
reserved a storeroom in the maquiladora workers' barrio of
Maclovio Rojas to house the confiscated machines. But the
charro union stood at the door of the plant prepared for a
hostile confrontation with about 40 people, including former
company supervisors, holding big sticks ready to start a
fight with the workers.
They needn't have bothered. When a Labor Board official
noticed a strike flag in the door of the factory, he refused
to perform the confiscation because a "strike" was in
progress. Workers pointed out that the charro union itself
had ended its phantom strike, but the labor board just needed
a pretext. In a shouting match back at its downtown offices,
Labor Board president Raúl Zenil y Orona refused to discuss
any further action against the company, and he announced to
the workers that the confiscation would never happen.
In some ways, the workers were lucky they didn't end up in
jail. Baja California is the free-trade state, where the
advanced guard of Mexican industry and commerce live by a set
of rules that the rest of the country is only beginning to
adopt. In Baja, challenging the cabal of managers, government
officials and compliant unions that set these rules provokes
a grim and dangerous hostility. The state's prisons have been
home to many activists from the social movements of "los de
abajo," the people from below.
During the two strikes of Han Young workers in 1998 and 1999,
the first legal strike by an independent union in the
maquiladoras, strike leaders Enrique Hernández and José
Peñaflor spent months slipping through the shadows from
office to hidden office, seeking to avoid arrest. Julio
Sandoval, a leader of indigenous migrant farm workers, spent
three years in an Ensenada prison for leading land invasions
to secure farm workers a place to live. Hortensia Hernández
has been held in Tijuana's prison almost as long for fighting
for land and housing for the city's maquiladora workers in
the Maclovio Rojas barrio.
Laboring in the border's vital factory heart, Margarita
Avalos describes the grinding economic pressure driving these
social movements. Avalos worked at Industria Fronteriza for
two and a half years, and remembers her time ironing the
sleek garments sewn by her friends: "In the factory, the
administration was really authoritarian. They screamed
orders. They threw on the floor the things we needed to use.
They forced us to work extra time, and if we couldn't do it,
they said they wouldn't pay us for any of the time we worked
at all. Sometimes I had to work 24 hours straight, even going
without eating, in order to get out the orders they demanded.
The chemicals and the heat were hard on my body, and for
those of us who were pregnant, it was even worse."
For that, Avalos was paid $65 a week. If she really churned
out the nylons and bras the way the managers wanted, she
could make another $30, but that meant ironing a lot more
than the standard 2,000 pieces in an eight-hour shift, or one
every 15 seconds.
Raúl Ramírez, Baja California's Human Rights prosecutor,
faults the government's desire to protect investment above
all else. "The authorities don't care about the poverty of
these communities, or their social problems like lack of
housing or drug addiction. But they are very concerned with
the question of the land titles of the large landholders.
They want to take care of their investments. So the
government uses the law, the police, even the army. They say
this provides safety and stability for investors. And they
abandon the poor."
The social cost of this policy, Ramírez says, can be found in
Baja California fields on any given day during the harvest
season, when workers pick tomatoes and strawberries for U.S.
supermarkets. Whole families work together in these
agricultural maquiladoras - children alongside adults. Félix,
a 12-year-old boy picking cilantro in Maneadero in June 2003,
said his parents were making about 70 pesos a day (a little
over $6), while he was bringing home half that. "We can't
live if we all don't work," he said, in the tone of someone
explaining the obvious.
At wages a tenth of those paid for the same job in Los
Angeles, it might seem fair if maquila workers only had to
pay a tenth of L.A. prices for food, rent or any of the basic
necessities of life. But that's not the world of the border
either. Two years ago a group of New England nuns, who
organized the Center for Reflection, Education and Action
(CREA), did an exhaustive survey of border prices. They found
that for a kilo of rice, a Tijuana maquiladora worker had to
labor for an hour and a half. Even an undocumented worker
bussing dishes in Beverly Hills at minimum wage can take the
same rice home with only 10 minutes' pay.
As usual, what appears to be a legal problem - in this case
the enforcement of labor laws - is really about money. It's a
recipe for confrontation, and all along the border economic
pressure is fueling a wave of industrial unrest.
The National Labor Policy of Mexican President Vicente Fox
caters to investors, not minimum-wage maquila workers. In
2001, the World Bank recommended rewriting Mexico's
Constitution and Federal Labor Law, eliminating protections
for workers in place since the 1920s [See "Escalating
Struggles over Mexico's Labor Law," p. 16]. The new law would
drop mandatory severance pay and stipulations that require
companies to negotiate over factory closures. No longer would
employers have to grant permanent worker status after 90
days, limit part-time work or abide by the 40-hour week. And
the law would also eliminate the historical ban on
strikebreaking. Mexico's guarantees of employer-paid job
training, health care and housing, would be scrapped as well.
Essentially, these recommended changes would institutionalize
in the rest of Mexico the kind of labor relations that
already exist, on the ground, in the maquiladoras.
Fox embraced the Bank's report, calling it "very much in line
with what we have contemplated." The recommendations were so
extreme that even the head of a leading employers'
association, Claudio X. Gonzalez, called them "over the top,"
noting the Bank didn't dare to make such proposals in
developed countries. "Why are they then being recommended for
the emerging countries?" he asked.
In Mexico City, Jesús Campos Linas, the labor lawyers' dean,
was appointed to head the local labor board by left-wing
Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Campos Linas rejects Fox's
argument that gutting worker protections will make the
economy more competitive, attract greater investment and
create more jobs. "Mexico already has one of the lowest wage
levels in the world," he charges, "yet there's still this cry
for more flexibility. The minimum wage in Mexico City is
[less than $4] a day - no one can live on this. And [in 2002]
we lost 400,000 jobs. Changing the labor law will not solve
this problem."
Tiburcio Pérez Castro, professor of education at the National
Pedagogical University, accuses the Baja California
government of only enforcing those provisions of the law that
protect private property. "There's a law guaranteeing people
the right to health care, but no one has any," he notes
bitterly. "There's a law which protects the right to food,
but thousands of people go hungry every day."
So in the end, according to Pérez Castro, the rule of law
itself is in question in Baja California, "at least insofar
as it protects people, especially the poor, in the
enforcement of their rights. They pass laws to protect the
maquiladoras, so the rule of law exists in that sense," he
admits. "But there is a danger to social stability, because
it's so one-sided."
Whose priorities will prevail in Mexico, those of workers or
those of free-trade investors? "The changes proposed by the
Bank would be a gigantic step backwards for workers," Campos
Linas emphasized. "The bankers don't understand that it took
a revolution - a million people died - to get our
constitution and labor law. Our problem isn't that we need a
new law; it's to enforce the one we have."
In Baja California, the free-trade state, that's not so easy.
II. Customtrim/Autotrim
In early September 2002, the coalition for Justice in the
Maquiladoras (CJM), a group that brings together unions,
churches and community groups in the three NAFTA countries,
put out a call to border activists, urging them to act
quickly to salvage one of the few remaining complaints filed
under the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation
(NAALC): the case of mistreated workers at the Customtrim and
Autotrim plants.
What followed that call, and the ultimate fate of the
Customtrim/Autotrim complaint, is not only a stark
illustration of the failure of the NAALC, but also a grim
warning. As the Bush Administration pushes hard for the
Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the Free
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), free trade's defenders
argue that the rights of workers in Central and South America
under these agreements can be protected in much the same way
that the NAALC protected the rights of workers in Mexico. The
bitter experience of the workers at Customtrim/Autotrim and
their supporters, however, indicates that exactly the
opposite is true. Labor protections embodied in the NAALC not
only failed in this one case, but in every other effort made
by workers to use the same mechanism to protect their health,
their safety and their rights at work. Basing protection for
workers in future agreements on this experience condemns them
to the same fate.
The labor cooperation agreement is usually referred to as the
labor side-agreement to the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA). It set up a process that free-trade
supporters argued would protect the health, safety and labor
rights of workers in the three NAFTA countries - the United
States, Mexico and Canada. Under the side- agreement,
workers, unions and community organizations could file
complaints if worker protection or health and safety laws
were not being enforced. NAFTA also had a second side-
agreement, the North American Agreement on Environmental
Cooperation. Its process, similar to that of the labor side-
agreement, supposedly allowed communities to file complaints
over cases of environmental contamination.
Both agreements were crucial to residents of the U.S.- Mexico
border, since violations of labor rights, dangers to worker
health and safety, and extreme cases of environmental
contamination have been commonplace in this region since long
before the agreements were proposed. These problems are a
result of a longstanding development policy in which both the
Mexican and U.S. governments encouraged corporations to
relocate production to border factories, or maquiladoras, by
creating a border zone within which labor protection, health
and safety, and environmental laws were essentially not
enforced. By 2001, more than 2,000 such factories were
employing more than 1.3 million people, and border cities
like Tijuana and Juárez had mushroomed into industrial urban
centers with over a million residents each.
The CJM's urgent call of September 2002 was motivated by its
learning of a secret discussion between U.S. and Mexican
government officials, held in the San Diego Convention
Center, supposedly to find ways of protecting the safety and
health of maquiladora workers. From the perspective of the
activist group, the secret meeting highlighted just how empty
the promises of the side- agreements have been. The first
problem was that the workers themselves, the very victims of
the conditions that the side-agreements were intended to
remedy, were excluded from the process.
Workers at the Customtrim and Autotrim plants, owned by the
U.S. auto-parts giant Breed Technologies, had filed a
complaint that they had been systematically exposed to toxic
chemicals at work in violation of Mexican health and safety
laws. The sickest ones were referred to by management as
"junked workers" and were forced to labor in a special area.
When workers began organizing an independent union to
protest, the most active participants were fired, a violation
of Mexican labor law. Complaints to the authorities went
nowhere, and workers filed a case under the labor side-
agreement, assisted by the CJM along with U.S. health and
safety activists.
The body responsible for resolving the workers' complaint -
the Binational Working Group on Occupational Safety and
Health - organized the San Diego meeting, but the discussion
inside the convention center was really about dumping the
workers' case, not resolving it. A year before, a report
issued by the National Administrative Office of the U.S.
Department of Labor concluded that extensive violations of
Mexican health and safety laws had taken place in the two
Breed Technologies plants in Matamoros and Valle Hermosa.
Workers testified at the hearing that prompted the report,
risking their jobs and ensuring that they would be
blacklisted for years. Independent health and safety experts
from both countries had also submitted massive documentation.
Workers and their supporters thought there was yet a chance
that, for the first time, monetary penalties might be imposed
on Mexico for not enforcing its own laws, since the side-
agreement allows for heavy fines in cases of health and
safety violations.
In the end, however, the secret and exclusive San Diego
meeting proved to be the only actual outcome of the NAFTA
process. The meeting was "a charade and a disgrace," fumed
CJM director Martha Ojeda. "Instead of specific, effective
action to improve conditions at Autotrim/Customtrim, and
throughout the maquiladora industry along the border, the
injured workers are promised 'chats' between government
officials whose refusal to listen and to act was the exact
basis of the complaint in the first place," she railed.
By 2002, the number of new complaints filed under the labor
side-agreement had slowed to a trickle and finally to none at
all. Under President Clinton, appointees to the National
Administrative Office of the Department of Labor, which is
responsible for hearing evidence on complaints, often tried
to maintain at least the appearance of a commitment to
workers' rights. For some judges, like Irasema Garza, who
took testimony from Customtrim/Autotrim workers, that
commitment was more than just appearance. With the Bush
Administration, however, the United States has ceased to even
bother with pretense. Bush's unmistakable message was that
any effort to restrain trade and investment was politically
wrong- headed. And for his part, Mexican President Vicente
Fox did nothing to change the basic hostility to the appeal
process evidenced by his predecessors.
The problem with the side-agreement process, however, isn't
the attitude of the public officials responsible for
administering it, although they often make it clear that even
an appearance of fairness depends on the political will of
the administration in power. Whether liberals or
conservatives hold office, in Washington, Mexico City or
Ottawa, they are all committed to corporate-defined free
trade. Enforcing labor rights and environmental protections
runs contrary to the purpose for which NAFTA was negotiated -
creating conditions favorable to investment.
The Bush Administration is simply more open in its embrace of
this goal and sees nothing wrong with making money from low
wages and relaxed controls over pollution. This attitude will
also be the hallmark of the agreements designed to extend
NAFTA southward - CAFTA and the FTAA. Mindful of the
Customtrim/Autotrim case, those considering their positions
relative to CAFTA and the FTAA should heed the warning by
Connie Garcia of the San Diego-based Environmental Health
Coalition as she stood outside the closed San Diego meeting:
"NAFTA fails to protect workers or the environment. Its terms
should not be reproduced in new agreements."
The move to hold a secret hearing on the Customtrim/Autotrim
situation surprised no one, and most border activists saw it
for what it was - a last gasp of the NAFTA side-agreement
process sputtering to a halt.
III. Metales y Derivados
Metales y Derivados is an abandoned battery recycling plant
sitting on the lip of Otay Mesa adjoining Tijuana. Standing
outside the plant walls on the chemical- encrusted ground,
it's possible to look over the mesa's edge and see people
moving about in the working-class barrio of Chilpancingo
below. There, six years earlier, the Border Region Workers'
Support Committee (CAFOR) and the Citizens' Committee for the
Restoration of Cañon del Padre had documented the growing
number of children born with anencephaly; i.e., without
brains. Two of CAFOR's Mexican organizers, Eduardo Badillo
and Aurora Pelayo, along with their U.S. supporters were
stopped from making annual counts of the growing number of
cases after the issue began to appear in the press. But
enough data had been accumulated, they believed, to cite
Metales y Derivados as a likely source of the pollution
causing the horrific birth defect.
In 1998 the San Diego-based Environmental Health Coalition
(EHC) and the Citizens' Committee in Tijuana filed a case
under the environmental side-agreement. They alleged that
Mexican authorities hadn't enforced environmental laws
against the plant's owners, the New Frontier Trading
Corporation, based in San Diego. Staff working for the North
American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (NACEC)
investigated the complaint and reported their findings in
February 2002.
Their study documented the illegal storage of 7,000 tons of
toxic waste and the presence of lead, arsenic and heavy
metals in the soil surrounding the defunct plant. It also
mentioned an inconclusive survey of lead contamination among
Chilpancingo residents conducted by a team from the
University of California at Irvine. Cesar Luna, the lawyer
who headed the EHC's border project at the time the case was
filed, documented one case of anencephaly himself and heard
reports from residents of at least half a dozen others.
But NACEC staff had no power to investigate the actual health
conditions in Chilpancingo, and no official record of
contamination existed because Mexican authorities never
conducted a health survey in the barrio. They had good reason
not to do so. Reports of anencephaly had been increasingly
frequent in industrial communities all along the border, but
the lax enforcement of environmental laws is an important,
albeit unspoken, means for attracting new factories. A
scandal about children without brains might discourage any
future flow of investment.
So just as in the labor case, that was it. "All we got was a
report, and an incomplete one at that," grumbled EHC policy
advocate Connie Garcia. "Nothing changed on the ground. NAFTA
provides for no cleanup plan or enforcement mechanism, and
the community continues to be poisoned," she charged."
[David Bacon is a freelance writer and photographer; he
writes regularly on labor and immigration issues. His latest
book is The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the US/Mexico
Border (University of California Press, 2004).]
_______________________________________________________
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
06:58 PM
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Comments (0)
July 07, 2005
chigs back
yes comrades
el chig is back
"in country"
only
we struggle ranchers
no not where
" in country"
phone call message
" herb we're home...
can't talk now ...
on the move
see u all in august "
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Posted by herb jr. jr. at
12:10 PM
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adventures in the creation economy : part 19
to meat & co
larry flynt
prudently sez
"no mas....for now "
=======================================
yes heres the e mail from meat me:
" flynt has put his naked sky channel
on hold
so comrade
our services
are now
once again
100 % availible to the klass struggle
at your disposal
and
in solidarity
the meat stick three "
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Posted by herb jr. jr. at
11:59 AM
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Comments (0)
my fourth?
what else
40 lite beers and a mule
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Posted by herb jr. jr. at
11:55 AM
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i'm back
yup
and
with a boil on my ass
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Posted by herb jr. jr. at
11:54 AM
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Comments (0)
after sween le deluge ?
well lets fuckin hope so ....
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Posted by herb jr. jr. at
11:52 AM
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Comments (0)