My Take

general strike for single payer

 we need to start now

pick a target date 
      that leaves  a long lead time 

like say
        the  work  days  
                before   /after  
                labor day next ....


==============================================

this needs vast mobilzation

all jobsters may play here 

one demand 
federal assumption of all medical payments
           that's it period

the proper org 
 should be like the old anti nam mob umbrellas 
 
a coalition (pro tem )
             formed for the event only 

strippper a go go

 
the final   full strip 
            in auto
                is on 


and yet
        the  UAW soup hounds
          still won't cry
 
         " battle stations"

   why ????
              why why why 

  why 
        go quietly into this dark night  ????

==========================================

  this 
        payroll  strip is no tease 
       the auto workers
both  retired
           and active
   are headed straight to their  birthday suits 

         and still no mobilization 

 look  back at the steel workers u boobs

         are u goin down  on the bosses 
                                 likewise ?????


          call out the gang 
           nation wide 

               at all three  domestic makers 

          plus the parts plants 
                            plus the .. plus
                                          plus
                                           plus
      brake the contracts 

          brake the law

get thrown in jail
pull a full Debs here 

        if this is alamo time
  and sure
              AS HELL 
               it looks like it...
then 
fucking at least

             GO DOWN SWINGING 

--------


 here's the local press

 they might as well
         be egging u on 


la times :

"Workers at auto parts maker Delphi Corp
 will be asked this week 
to take a two-thirds pay cut
 It's one of the most drastic
 wage concessions ever sought
         from unionized employees"


"Workers at General Motors Corp
 tentatively agreed on Monday 
to absorb billions of dollars 
in healthcare costs"

" Ford Motor Co. 
and DaimlerChrysler employees 
are certain to face similar demands"

 

"Prospects for the rank-and-file at Delphi
 are  grim..... 
Labor historians say they can't remember
 a moment during an economic recovery
 when so many at one company 
were asked to give back so much all at once"


" Delphi employees earn an average of $27 an hour
 in addition to medical and retirement benefits
 By contrast, workers at Delphi's 
profitable China operations earn about $3 an hour"


"Vacations reportedly will be slashed 
from six weeks to four weeks.
 Healthcare premiums will be higher.
 The company's pension contributions 
will be lower.
 Paid holidays will shrink
from 17 a year to as few as 10
. And wages will fall sharply,
 to as low as $10 or $12 an hour"
  
----------------------------------------

behold  the hand wringers  :


  Harley Shaiken:

 "If the only way to compete
 is with $10 wages
 we have a problem 
that is much larger 
than just Delphi.
 We're looking at a society 
where people exit 
rather than enter
 the middle class."



 Jared Bernstein : 

"A few hundred thousand jobs
 may have been lost directly
 to cheaper jobs overseas
But what's under-recognized 
is how millions of others
 might have kept their jobs
 — or at least, a job — 
but lost current or future benefits"


 Leon Fink :

"There used to be a kind
 of floor for worker welfare:
  but today 
we're now living in an age 
in which all the old standards 
         have come unglued."


  where's the friend of labor calling for massive job actions

sit downs occupations sieges 
we shall not be moved 
bring on 
the riot sticks
the smoke bombs
the rubber bullets 

 take some of this garbage 
      and flush it back in their faces 





--------------------------

brake all klass laws

  more evidence for the union as outlaw model

   seize it B& S ers 

 BRAKE THE LAWS OF WALL SRTEET 

How Courts Shut Down Union Free Speech
By Nathan Newman | bio

People think the First Amendment exists,
 but if you're in a labor union,
 the courts have declared it doesn't apply.

   Take union pickets--
 in what is a depressingly normal decision, 
the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals
 has allowed a company to move forward 
on a lawsuit against a union 
for exercising free speech
-- free speech which can be punished
 because it's done by a union.



" picketing will be unlawful 
if there is an expectation 
or a hope or a desire 
that employees of the secondary employer 
will be induced or encouraged 
to take concerted action 
to quit working behind the picket line. "


..Ruzicka Electric presented evidence that Local 1 agents, acting as observers at the neutral gate, engaged in picketing activity, asking neutral employees to refuse to work. If believed, this evidence establishes Local 1 engaged in unlawful secondary activity.
Most progressives don't fully understand that if a union asks other workers to help them during a strike, they have often broken the law"
  

UNIONS  asking for help -- is an illegal act 

IN WALL STREET'S COURT HOUSES  ANYWAY  

 

" In the US
 the First Amendment has been declared 
null and void
 at the workplace door"
 
 "any attempt to ask for 
labor unity is a crime" 


SO BRAKE  EM

 BRAKE WALL STREETS LAWS 
                    
          JIMBO AND JANE

BRAKE EM LIKE SO MANY FIDDLE STICKS 

EARLY GIVES DAH BOWFF OF EM DAH BOID

.
Both  Labor Federations Fail Test of Strike Solidarity

>From October, 2005, issue of Labor Notes 
http://labornotes.org/index.shtml

By Steve Early Having two labor federations, instead of
one, is not a new idea in America--or necessarily a
negative development. 

Prior to the 1955 merger of the American Federation of
Labor (AFL) and Congress of Industrial Organizations
(CIO), union competition was more often the norm in the
U.S. than not.  As a result, workers often had a wider
range of options when they decided to organize or
became dissatisfied with their existing union
representation.

In the 1880s and '90s, for example, fledgling AFL
building trades unions wooed members away from the more
loosely-organized and less practical-minded Knights of
Labor. During the first two decades of the 20th
century, the radical Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) challenged the then-dominant AFL by recruiting
unskilled factory workers ignored by the building
trades. 

Between 1935 and 1955, craft and industrial unions were
again bitter foes. But their political and workplace
conflict provided millions of workers with a clear
choice between the continuing conservatism of the AFL
and the left-leaning militancy of the CIO. 

Unfortunately, the current split between the AFL-CIO
and its new rival, the Change To Win Coalition (CTWC),
did not emerge from any transformative grassroots
movement--of the kind that has made unions a more
progressive force in the past.

The CTWC's break with the AFL-CIO developed out of
inside-the-Beltway bureaucratic squabbles that union
members have little interest in and no say about. The
AFL-CIO and its defectors don't have radically
different workplace organizing or political agendas.
Unlike the Knights of Labor, IWW, or early CIO, no
labor grouping today is projecting an alternative
vision of how the economy should be re-structured to
aid and empower America workers. 

Most revealing of all, both the AFL-CIO and its former
affiliates in the CTWC are currently failing a
fundamental test of labor solidarity. At Northwest
Airlines and other carriers, thousands of mechanics
have formed an independent union, the Aircraft
Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA). AMFA is now
striking against  massive job cuts and contract
concessions at Northwest.

Rather than recognizing everyone's stake in the outcome
of this fight, many labor officials are either
denouncing  AMFA or ignoring its pleas for
help--because the workers it represents at North West
and other airlines have, for good reason, voted out
unions affiliated with either the AFL-CIO and CTWC.
(Some national unions have at least discouraged members
and staffers from flying on the airline during the
strike--and the UAW, to its enormous credit, has made
an $800,000 strike fund contribution to AMFA.) But, at
the national level, organized labor in general is just
repeating its terrible mistake in 1981 when air traffic
controllers walked out and were similarly
ostracized--in that case, because of their prior
support for Ronald Reagan (the president who then fired
and replaced them!).

Fortunately,  union members in many cities--like
Boston, Minneapolis, Detroit, and San Franciso--are
rallying behind AMFA, just as they did around PATCO. If
the future of unions is going to be any less bleak than
their recent past, we need many more such examples of
bottom-up solidarity and rank-and-file initiative. What
makes labor a real movement is not the machinations of
its national bureaucracies or officials--whether
they're merging or splitting up. Effective unionism is
rooted in the collective activity of workers on the job
and in their communities. Now, as in the past, that's
the only reliable source of mutual aid and protection
for all working people.

(Steve Early has been active in the labor movement
since 1972. He works for CWA District 1 in Boston and
is part of  the Solidarity Committee of Massachusetts
Jobs With Justice, which is aiding Northwest strikers.)

CTW

1.
A New Labor Federation Claims Its Space: If Enthusiasm
on Display Were Substance, CtW Could Claim a Good Start
by Jerry Tucker

Jerry Tucker

The founding convention of the Change-to-Win labor
federation held in St. Louis on September 27, 2005 was,
if nothing else, filled with enthusiasm and efficiently
managed. The founding unions' top leaders put forward a
lean and specifically organizing-focused agenda, and it
was adopted without even a hint of dissent. The
longer-term question is whether this self-described new
direction in unionism will help reverse the growing
inequity and inequality of theU.S. working class, who
are now experiencing the most economically and
politically destructive period in decades.

The event was well managed. Timetables were kept. The
principal leaders' speeches throughout the day
introduced themes and calls to action in a well-charted
sequence. Several were punctuated by the introduction
of rank-and-file workers invited to tell their stories
in ways that highlighted either the CtW's immediate
impact or scenarios where CtW action would likely
produce victories. The some 460 convention delegates
and over 200 additional observers -- overwhelmingly
made up of local officers and staff -- gave rousing
approval to every resolution and initiative put before
them. The high energy of a well-coached contender was
on display.

Also on display was the absence of profound differences
between the seven defecting unions and the AFL-CIO they
leave behind. However historic the CtW's formation will
ultimately be deemed, on launch day it offered little
to distinguish it from the abiding traditions and
utilitarian culture of its former mothership. However,
the dominant theme which the CtW unions hammered at
throughout the long, pre-split "debate period," a
renewed organizing focus and complimentary
restructuring initiative, was very much still the
center of the CtW's agenda.

Mantra-like, the theme that "organizing is power" was
repeated throughout the day's proceedings. There were a
few rhetorical nods to such questions as poverty (to be
reduced by creating full-time work for anyone who wants
it), "revolutionizing our failing health care system,"
creating a new political movement (often described as
finding "good" Democrats and Republicans to support),
championing diversity (something scarcely seen on the
floor at this founding event), and "globalization," a
faintly noted threat with little elaboration. The
centrality of "organizing" underpins the entire new CtW
structure and constitution and virtually all
resolutions adopted at the inaugural convention.

Three-quarters of all the CtW funds will be devoted to
organizing, starting with the $16 million initial
budget and continuingly derived from the dues-based .25
per capita per affiliate member which is estimated to
total $750 million annually. These funds are the CtW
federation's own organizing monies, separate from the
even greater amounts expected to be spent by affiliates
on organizing as well. The organizational structure, as
described, includes "three basic components": Executive
Office; Strategic Organizing Center; and Organizing
Fund.

These functioning components are under the direction of
a CtW Leadership Council (LC), which meets every two
months; the Leadership Council selects the CtW Chair
(currently SEIU's Anna Burger) and a Treasurer (Edgar
Romney, Unite-HERE Executive Vice President). Named CtW
Executive Director is Greg Tarpinian, of Labor Research
Association. Picked to head the all-important Strategic
Organizing Center is SEIU Executive Vice President, Tom
Woodruff. (I am unaware, as of this posting, who will
head the Organizing Fund component).

Tom Woodruff gave the presentation which outlined the
general organizing goals and objectives of the new
federation. He indicated that, in the 14 occupational
sectors where the CtW affiliates were currently
representing 6 million workers, there were 44 million
unorganized workers. He defined them as the CtW's
target population. Explicit in the assumption about the
CtW's organizing target -- the assumption common to the
unions making up the CtW -- is the fact that the
targeted sectors are largely unaffected by
globalization or, as Woodruff put it, "off-shoring."

Here -- on the question of claimed jurisdiction -- lies
the fault line of the U.S. labor movement, which has
been widening for years. The CtW carves out most,
though not all, of the "landlocked" employment sectors,
leaving the AFL-CIO with the sectors most damaged by
capital's ever increasing mobility and neoliberal
motives (i.e., industrial and digitalized sectors),
as-yet-unprivatized blocks of the public sector, and a
loose collection of other unions. Among those remaining
in the old federation's fold are the centerpiece unions
(auto, steel, electrical, and chemical) of the great
CIO upsurge of the 1930s and s -- along with the UMW
and the IAM, most public employee unions, and the
high-profile Communications Workers who have retained a
somewhat aggressive organizing and collective
bargaining reputation but, like many others, suffer
from global capital's bare-knuckle agenda. Still in the
AFL camp are also a cluster of building & construction
trades unions. These "left-behind" unions are not
linked in ways that the CtW affiliates are structurally
linked -- the only point of unity being their
membership in the AFL-CIO. (It was clear in the
confident CtW leaders' side conversations that they
expected more defectors from the AFL-CIO to align with
them in time.)

During Tuesday's convention, several floor speakers
referred to the rise of the CIO, and some reporters in
the press section speculated on comparisons between
today's CtW breakaway and that of industrial labor's
1930s juggernaut. I'm among those who see little to
compare between the two to date. The CIO was home to a
significant number of left worker activists who led
many of the organizing and direct action struggles
which empowered the country's working class,
particularly in mass production industries. Many of
those rising leaders were "big picture" activists and
collectively offered a vision that could, in their
view, fundamentally transform the whole society.

Local unions emerging at the thousands of workplaces in
the initial CIO era were generally horizontally
organized, robustly democratic, and built in part by
workers' self-activity. The CtW's operational
perspective is unapologetically vertical, and internal
democracy, outside of its current limited application
in its respective affiliates, didn't make its talking
points at its founding convention.

Also notably absent from the spoken and written
proceedings of the CtW convention were words usually
associated with union conventions. For example, the
word "solidarity" was strangely missing from virtually
all major leaders' speeches and does not appear
anywhere in the five resolutions approved by the
convention. Similarly, none of the resolutions
contained the word "justice." The language of the
convention, instead, favored techno-futurist phrases
and corporate focus-group jargon like "growing the
labor movement" through "value-added integration," a
phrase that appears to be designed to replace the word
"solidarity."

This is not to suggest that revitalizing the labor
movement is dependent on old language rather than new
initiatives, an overriding social vision, and the
ability to win the allegiance of millions of workers.
But words like solidarity and justice don't scare
workers or our working-class community allies. What
they embody does, however, make our corporate
adversaries uncomfortable. We can only speculate on why
today's labor movement leaders feel the need to so
readily replace them.

CtW leaders and staff were generally open to reporters,
and there were several press briefings by principals
during the otherwise busy day. Mostly they "stayed on
message," trying to amplify themes of building "new
worker power" and "devoting resources to growth"
through their new commitment to organizing. They tended
to avoid direct criticisms of, or comparisons to, the
senior federation. But the question of how CtW
affiliates would interact with AFL-CIO affiliates at
the state and local level (a topic receiving a lot of
attention at the AFL-CIO convention in Chicago and
since) was also on the minds of the CtW founders and a
majority of the delegates. It was the CtW position that
local CtW affiliates continue to stay connected to the
local and state bodies. That, Chairperson Anna Burger
explained, was a matter still in negotiations with the
AFL-CIO.

Spokespersons focused on the CtW's organizing
objectives, and deflected inquiries of the
organization's position on such questions as the war in
Iraq (Anna Burger's response in the noon press
conference was "that affiliates can take their own
positions and some have"). She indicated that action on
that question may be taken at a later time. The
question of whether the CtW would support the striking
AMFA mechanics at Northwest Airlines received the same
reply: "it was up to the individual affiliates."

The convention did address the Hurricane Katrina and
Gulf states situation. A resolution was passed to
"rebuild new hope and new communities in the gulf
coast." The resolution noted how "the disproportionate
impact of Hurricane Katrina on minority and low-income
communities exposes the need to address persisting
economic and racial inequality in the Gulf Coast and
across this country." On this question, the old
federation and the new one have put forward very
similar programs involving large dollar commitments to
retrain workers in the affected region. The CtW also
announced that it would be "partnering with the
Reverend Jesse Jackson and Rainbow/PUSH in its
comprehensive rebuilding effort."

In mid afternoon, the press pool was alerted to an
impromptu briefing opportunity with SEIU President Andy
Stern who, more than any other CtW leader, had forced
the debate that had led to the split. He was seated on
a couch in the area immediately in front of the
convention entrance, alongside several of the
rank-and-file janitors from Houston whose organizing
victory had been touted earlier in the convention. With
the press tightly knotted around him, Stern answered
questions about the hopes for the new organization.
"The change process has ended," he stated, "and now
that we've changed, we can win."

When asked about how to talk with the union membership,
Brother Stern said, "Blogs and the internet. Union
halls and small groups aren't working." At one point in
the interview, he made the assertion that engaging in
"class struggle unionism was outdated" and that "a new
partnership with employers was necessary to build
unions and America."

But, when asked why workers weren't joining unions
today, he responded firmly that "employers are why
workers don't join unions." Later, he stated that "we
need global unions to compete with global companies."
And on the subject of politics he said, "Democrats
don't have a clue. When they figure out how to solve
working families' problems, then they'll get
somewhere."

As the one-day convention came to a close, the
delegates, many of whom as noted were long-time local
officials and business agents in their respective
unions, were still conveying an uncustomary degree of
collective enthusiasm and perhaps even some
"value-added integration" to apply to the work ahead. A
reception to close out the long day helped the
delegates celebrate their new Federation's founding
convention.

A Brief Side Trip to Add Perspective

Before offering any concluding commentary on the
Change-to-Win convention, I would like to briefly
mention another event which was coincidentally held in
St. Louis the weekend immediately preceding the CtW
event. That event was the Jobs with Justice National
Annual Meeting.

Jobs with Justice, or JwJ for short, is an
organizations founded by labor and community activists
some years ago to serve as a broader coalition to
mobilize workers and communities to actively resist
injustice.

There are a number of JwJ chapters in major cities and
communities around the country. In many locations, they
have provided local labor with critical "shock troops"
and given a more progressive face to workplace and
community struggles. JwJ has a small national staff and
a national board of directors made up of activist
community and religious leaders, as well as a number of
labor leaders. Today, those labor representatives, both
at the national and local JwJ board level, are on both
sides of the recent split in the labor movement. That's
a reality that most of the 1000 some JwJ conferees were
well aware of as they met.

The JwJ national meeting represented a marked contrast
with the CtW convention in several ways, the contrast
that is still remarkable after their different origins
and stated purposes are taken into account. Unlike the
CtW's convention, JwJ participants were very diverse --
racially, ethnically, and by gender and sexual
orientation. They were on average much younger, and
many were union organizers, local leaders, and
rank-and-filers. They listened to speeches and
participated in workshops which explored a wide range
of current working-class challenges. They were also
very enthusiastic as their meeting ended, and hundreds
of them delayed leaving to join an anti-war march in a
heavy rain storm on Sunday.

Just as the current labor split is causing uncertainty
within the existing State and local labor bodies, a
similar tension affects labor support elements like
JwJ. This is not the time for organizations fighting
for justice to take spectator seats, waiting for labor
to sort out its less-than-epic differences. If
anything, those frontline organizations should surge
forward, using all the innovation and militancy their
coalition of the class can muster, to help point the
way to a new social justice agenda for our
working-class communities.

Where -- from Here?

We now have two "competing" labor centers in America.
Yet neither represents a conscious break with the
cultures, traditions, and failures of the past which
have pushed us so deeply into the crisis they have both
acknowledged. The primary emphasis of each labor
federation may differ, but their competition is still
within the realm of business, or "partnership,"
unionism.

CtW, with still the most to prove, will more
effectively deploy its resources to organizing within
the targeted sectors it claims. And some successes are
likely. The AFL-CIO bureaucracy will counter with its
own relative structural and tactical modifications.
Partisans in both camps will hype their respective
achievements -- and yet the sustained and relentless
attacks on workers by capital will continue.

Missing throughout those many long months of in-house
debate, and still missing today, is an overarching
vision of what a just society should look like: how to
break with the economic elitists who are waging the
one-sided class warfare against workers in this
country, and around the world; and how to build the
solidarity to promote and sustain such a vision.

Today in the U.S., there is no influential center, or
"third voice," to provide an alternative space for
discussion of class-struggle strategies and creation of
a new paradigm to replace the failed "partnership
unionism" of the past. What is now needed is for
workers, social activists, intellectuals, and other
persons with the enthusiasm for such a center to come
together. Then, the real debate can begin.

Jerry Tucker is a long-time U.S. union
activist and former Executive Board Member of the
United Auto Workers union. He was a founder of the UAW
New Directions Movement.

national strike for single payer health

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