November 30, 2005
give me a fuckin brake episode 13793
this I read
by a red nugget rooter
all a glow :
"the number of private sector work
stoppages is up 14 percent ...."
"up 14%"
thats got this bo peep excited ???
there's better ....
" this even as
hugely profitable corporations
demanded givebacks"
"even as "
what in hell ????
" even as "
as in what??
as in
despite
as in
in the teeth of
stoppages are up
fuck we should be burning
these cut and run trans nats
fucking domestic factories
to the ground by now
just goes to show ya
of
delightsome nit wits
we lef-testicles got our fair share
want more .....
=============================
try this on
"Of course strikes are no panacea.
Strategy counts. Lose
one and you've blown a fuse
that could stay blown
for a generation.
Timing counts, too.
So does preparation.
Because if union members
aren't yet willing to strike,
no amount of brave, bully talk
will get them out."
there were
"231 work stoppages initiated through the end
of August, compared with 202 in the same period last
year, with the vast majority being strikes."
get it 231
how many job sites we got
with say 150 jobblers on location
300,000 ?????
hey here's a whizzzzer
"Strikers seem to be getting results, too.."
really ???
" Boeing
machinists got a better health-care package
after
striking, though the outcome is unclear at Delphi
Corp"
" The real growth in labor organizing
in the
mid-1930s came on the heels of a mini-recovery,
and the
nation's largest strike wave
hit after World War II,
when the economy boomed
even as workers salaries stayed
frozen at war levels"
"This period is a little different"
who is jingling his bells here???
Michael Hirsch
" a staff writer for the New York
Teacher, the newspaper
of the United Federation of
Teachers "
yup he's a shanker cranker
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
01:42 PM
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November 23, 2005
TEXAS FLIP
FOR THE RECORD I CSAUGHT UP WITH THESE BASTARDS
TWO FLIPS AGO
thanx to my pal
PHIL "HIGH LOW " SILVER
BUT FOR YOUR HOLIDAY ENJOYMENT ...
NYT :
"The buzz in Houston these days
is over the $4.9 billion in profit
that four elite private equity firms
- the Texas Pacific Group,
the Blackstone Group,
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
and
Hellman & Friedman -
stand to make from selling
an electricity company for $5.8 billion
==================================
" THESE low-profile owners
have managed to accomplish something rare
in this swaggering city:
a deal so ambitious in its scale
that it has caused jaws to drop
in Houston's energy circles
while angering and perplexing people
who are feeling the sting
of surging electricity prices"
"Lured by deregulation
of the electricity industry in Texas"
" the investors acquired
the electricity company Texas Genco
which owns several power plants
in the Houston area
just last year
with $900 million in cash"
" Now, they are selling it
to NRG Energy of Princeton, N.J.
for a gain of $5 billion "
"This part of the deregulation process
has transferred billions
from ratepayers to investors,"
Clarence L. Johnson, director of regulatory analysis
at the Office of Public Utility Counsel
a state agency in Texas
"Electricity prices in Houston
the largest city in Texas,
have climbed about 86 percent
since the deregulation
of the state's electricity industry in 2002"
" Electricity cooperatives
that are not part
of the state's deregulated market
have increased their rates only 18 percent
over the same period"
GREEN CAUSE ????
YUP
NATURAL GAS BURNS CLEANER
AND ....
ATTENDEZ VOUS
"the dark spread.....
the widening difference
between coal and natural gas prices
over the last year"
YUP WATCH EM ALL GO GREEN....
ONCE THEY'RE IN POSITION
HERE'S
a spokesman for NRG
the company that is buying Texas Genco :
"This puts NRG
in an even stronger position
to thrive on this volatile
natural gas environment"
money quote :
"The structure that made this possible
is without shame,"
----------------------------------------------------
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
06:28 AM
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THANX GIVING ????
JESUS THANX
FOR STEVE THE BUTT FUCKER
WHAT A PERSONIFICATION HE IS
THURSDAYS SUITABLE JOBBLERS FEAST :
A PRESSED TURKEY
REPLICA
OF MILLER'S HEAD
ON A HUB CAP
OH AND
STUFF HIS MOUTH WITH
THE MOCK ORGAN MEATS
OF
THE NATION'S FINEST AUTO CEO'S
ALL ACTUAL SIZE ....
"AND THEN
DO WHAT WITH IT
HERB ???"
MY SUGGESTION
FEED IT ALL
TO THE STREET HOUNDS
===============================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
06:10 AM
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NOT GENERAL MOTORS... GENERAL STRIKE
STRIKE U FOOLS ...STRIKE
MAKE IT SPREAD
NATIONWIDE
GET EVERY ONE OUT
BUTTERFINGER U ASS
STRIKE GM FORD AND NAZI-CHRISTLER NOW
SHUT EM ALL DOWN
IF NECESSARY SHUT EM UP
FOR GOOD
ITS OVER
ANYWAY
THIS ONE BY ONE WAY
BETTER GO DOWN FIGHTING
PUT IT TO THE MEMBERSHIP
U FUCKS
UP OR DOWN
--------------------
THE CONTRACT IS BROKEN
ALL INTO IT NOW OR ALL OUTOF IT
TOMORROW
THE DIFFERENCE :
DO IT ALL NOW
U CAN
MAKE THIS SOCIETY WIDE
U CAN LET AMERIKA'S
LITTLE PEOPLE DECIDE
DO THEY WANT THIS LIFE TOO ???
DO THEY WANT
A STEVE MILLER BAND
SCALPING THEM TOO ????
DO THEY WANT TO END UP
IN THE RECYCLING BIN
U GUYZ ARE HEADING TOWARDS ???
PUT THE QUESTION TO THEM
BY SHUTTING THE THREE KINGS DOWN
FOR ADVENT
==========================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
05:58 AM
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November 22, 2005
get cookin pies
talk about a fart in a windstorm
"Since 1999 the UFCW has filed
more than 300
charges against Wal-Mart
with the NLRB "...
300 in 6 years...
jesus fucked mary
over a saw horse
more times then that
that number needs to
start lookin
more like...
30,000
so
get it on pokes
or else
call in the jobakazees
you need to generate a fuckin tsunami
not a spritz
================================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
07:14 PM
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wine and cheeese gathering great success
we had our pow wow
with the hi tech glow worms
and ....
==========================
yes we can
still jobble
and jobble hard
in a post industrial amerika
the studio-lab days
will mean platinum jobsters rock
merit talent and knavish guile
will all pay handsome hourly rates
but as to
total
such offers
to
total
such jobs wanted
prolly not
all that much
better then
the ratio
of north amerikan
gm plant opennings
to
plant closings
in yesterday's
company salvation plan
-----------------------------------
but our purpose was achieved
we quantified
the coming shit slide :
according to
zee vunder geeks on hand
after much brew
and a few friendly dutch rubs
the net net
looks
kinda .... 'real shitty'
as in
better we run the film backwards to 1971
and go on the monetary blink right then and there
go solid gold
and
send the economy
right to the bottom of
the wishing well
why ?
cause that way
we'd
still have
about 18 million industrial jobs
now reported
as totally awol
---------------------
a number detail will follow once
fishbane gets his dick out of the zerox machine
but the high lites
are about like this
at least as computed
by
nerdly numberhood and his pals
by reducing world trade
to near zero for between
"a few to ten " years back then
today
we could drown the job export threat
in a bath tub
any old time we wanted
yes better a massive global depression in 75
i'll agree at least with this much
since that for shit sure
woulda sent us all else where
in alternative space time
odds are it would be better
then this optimo profiteer stinker
we're in now
but argggh
we'll just have to
figure out
how to struggle our way out of here
right mates ????
and oh
get your asses ..... arrested ....
NOW
------------------------------
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
05:49 PM
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the world after GM rip
in huxley's brave new cock suck
things are dated
in the year of our Ford xxx
hardee har har har
NOW.....
howz this tickle ya
in the year after GM yyy
==============================
imagine anything finer
then to be in walt's diner
in the sky
and hear from down below
" those fuckin ponzi pension
fuckin legacy costs
ya
and guess what hard ons
it was oh great uncle fuckin walt
jammed
those long fuse fuckers
up every one's ass hole ..."
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
05:41 PM
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November 18, 2005
squalidarity forever
"the six newly elected
trustees
of the Solidarity Center:
Margaret Blackshere,
president of the Illinois AFL-CIO;
Joslyn Williams,
president of the Metropolitan Washington
(D.C.) Council, AFL-CIO;
Tom Buffenbarger.
President of the International Association
of Machinists;
Larry Cohen,
president of the Communications
Workers of America;
Leo Gerard,
president of the United Steelworkers,
Susan Schurman,
president of the National Labor College.
what's up with you boobs ????
do u like being uncle hegemoniks patsies ?????
==========================================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
02:14 PM
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pension update : defined hustle
when it comes
to ponzi pensions
the pies still have it
=============================================
nyt :
" analysts have warned
the whole defined benefit
pension system
could eventually collapse
requiring a costly taxpayer bailout"
"But the legislative effort
has been slowed by warnings
from business executives"
" if companies are forced
to put unreasonable
amounts of money
into their pension plans
they would have to stop
offering pensions entirely"
--------- go right ahead ass holes
if you haven't already
its because they're a scam -----------
-------- now check this out ....-------------
"Organized labor
fearful of hastening the demise
of a valuable type of benefit
has tended to side with business
on the issue of pension funding"
------- yup collusion continues
these ponzi pies
need to be class actioned
all and severally
by their effected membership -------------
why not say it out loud
" we see no need
to put more money behind our promises"
fuck em gang fuck em
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
08:46 AM
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November 17, 2005
the last alamo never comes
this is the title
of my
conference openner :
====================================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
02:52 PM
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November 16, 2005
ten million vets smokin uncle's peace pipe
son of sam
sent
me
this belated vets day meditation
from his
blue ridge mountain fortress
=========================
how many of today's
grunts and jars
have another tour of duty
out there ahead of em
after iraq or goonystan ???
ya whats the likely head count
from thesitz and svitz
war over there in the oil patch
to a hitch
in one of amerika's
meanest
slippry rock outfits
as an E3 street sleeper ?????
well who fuckin cares
eh sister
pour me a dewars .... neat !!!!!
-----------------------------------------
but in a related story ...
right now
my guess iz
about
1,000,000 veterans
will spend
at least some quality time
next year
skid-in'
on the side walks
apropos both yarns
here's a nice official
lullaby alibi lie :
" 30 percent of those returning
from
Iraq develop
a serious mental health
problem shortly after
returning home"
hey tough guyz
get the drift here ???
u need to rock the VA 's boat
just as fuckin soon as u get out
crack some brass nutz
while u still got sand in your socks
cause
the spirits plan on brandin u
golden raisins
and then
treatin u like
rabbit shit
--------------------------------
but hellwe'll win in the bitter end
there's just too many of us
to swallow
we stick in their fuckin throats
like an arkansas
goiter
even left to be
some dull moment
down the road
the bitch will burst wide open ....
butfuck i ain't waitin
no matter what time i do tryin
i'm making the future come sooner
u all know
by now
how
the feds have my SAMS club scam
in a 24/7 horse collar
right ???
so with me off the rails
whats the prospect
for a vet fist up the gub's ass
approach
catching fire ???
zero
give or take a case of bud
-----------------------------------
theme for a fall color change :
" where's my ten million raging vets at ....any how ????"
as in
whats the goin odds on
a wall to wall
vet revanche here state side
say
this winter ???
whatever ...
don't take em....
the fuckers can't be long enough
doom gives birth to poison puppies
------------------------------
sure ass hole
sure i'm repeating
myself between black outs
but what can a humanist expect ...????
exhibit A
what booze
is enough comp
after reading
the de rigor
sober sided
pidgeon peckered
vet day's
blurple press prose
-------------------------------
ps
langerie ads aside
themz
'nough
to set my ring tail
a awitchin sidewise
so hard
i
near fucked my hound
---------------------------
then again
what do i mean ???
well
take this typical puker ...
from the charlotte
daily 'bars and stars'
"The national tragedy
of an underserved veteran
population
is compounded
by the incarceration of
veterans
who are suffering
from substance abuse
problems...."
------ latinated gluey
wooden indian prose
is that all we're worth ???? ------
then else where
this :
"When it comes to
jailing
our veterans
simply because
they are dealing
with a substance abuse problem ....
this nation needs to radically alter
its present course"
howz about an rpg rectal for this here
well intended goo goo
we ain't pathetic
u fuckin ass hole
even when we're more burnt
out then
a bar ash tray at 3 am
we ain't pathetic
stray mutts are pathetic
nope ass hole
we're warrior ghosts
trapped inside a bag
of
your fuckin
red white and blue garbage
=================================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
02:39 PM
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delphic con: episode 6
" when its all over
we won't
be building
anything
any one wants anymore "
OPERATIVE X1567832
in
rust bowl II
=============================================
delphi wants
their boyz and girlz
to settle
for tar heel chicken chop wages
"It is important to recall
that until the 1970s,
collective bargaining
in the United States and Canada
was largely about
workers demanding improvements
from
their employers"
"a new era in collective bargaining
erupted at the end of the 1970s
that was soon dubbed
'concessionary bargaining'"
.
"We are about to see
the second wave of this attack
on
the North American working class"
" though The first wave did
not, of course, ever subside.....
things are all about to get
dramatically worse"
---------------------------------------
The events signalling this second wave are unfolding in
the American auto industry. The United Auto Workers
(UAW), under threat from General Motors (GM), opened
its collective agreement to save GM over $1 billion in
health care costs. UAW is currently in negotiations at
Delphi (a components division spun off from GM in 1999)
where the corporation is threatening to go bankrupt if
workers don't cut their wages to $10/hr from the
current $26/hour as well as surrender health benefits
and more or less reduce the union to a dues collection
agency that overseas a non-union workplace.
None of this is entirely new: American (and to a lesser
extent Canadian) workers in the airline and steel
sectors are all too familiar with concessions linked to
corporate restructurings from bankruptcy. But given the
pattern-setting role that the auto sector has always
played, the impact of these latest developments should
not be underestimated. And given that the US-Canadian
auto industry is the most integrated cross-border
industry anywhere in the world, workers on the Canadian
side of the border will not be immune from the
concessions pressures.
Several key questions emerge. Will this be just an
isolated bad-news story -- a tsunami-warning -- that we
can only hope misses us or at least doesn't do any
damage? Or will it be a wake-up call warning us that if
you're not fighting back, you're only waiting for
things to get worse? Is what's coming inevitable or can
it be resisted? The first concessions wave led the
Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) in a direction that
challenged neoliberalism, free trade and ultimately
their UAW parent union. What will the CAW response be
this time?
Any effective counter-response will demand some
creativity on the part of workers and their unions, and
a crucial beginning is that workers in the US and
Canada start talking about why this is happening and
what might be done. The following points, we hope,
might contribute to the discussion of what an
anti-concessions campaign must take up. 1. You can not
privatize the welfare state.
The first generation of postwar autoworkers used the
good times to achieve a host of social benefits, health
care and pensions being the most important. But in bad
times, and especially when the competition didn't carry
the same costs, those benefits came under attack.
Defending them in bargaining had its limits both
because the companies were in trouble and because
winning benefits which other workers did not have left
autoworkers relatively isolated.
The response to the recent GM attack on the health care
benefits of autoworkers should have been - as some
American rank-and-file workers insisted - to call for a
national health care program that extended this crucial
benefit to everyone, not taking it away from those
happened to have some protection. The UAW did
eventually make this point, but only after they had
made the concessions on cutting healthcare costs for
the company. Had they challenged GM and put the larger
issue on the national agenda, the union might have been
a catalyst for a larger struggle (and for taking a step
towards reviving the potential social leadership role
of unions more generally). But declaring this only
after the precedent that UAW workers would bear the
costs of cutbacks was set reduced the UAW statement to
empty rhetoric.
For Canadian workers, this may seem beside the point,
as Canada already has a national health care plan. But
isn't that health care system now under attack? And if
this leads to having to negotiate an increasing share
of health care privately with companies, what would
happen to the CAW's ability to negotiate wages and
other benefits? More important, however, is a larger
lesson from the UAW concessions: workers and unions who
get too far ahead of other workers when the situation
favours them, will inevitably get in trouble when the
winds change. Workers in leading sectors will
eventually be dragged down if other workers are being
pushed to the margins. Progress for workers has to be
generalized or those gains will be vulnerable to
reversal. 2. The problem isn't 'out there' from
globalization, it is in North America.
The main problem that the GM and Delphi workers face
isn't competition from China or Mexico or even Japan
but issues which can be directly addressed at home. As
Steve Miller, the head of Delphi said in a recent
speech: "...in the auto industry, Toyota, Nissan, and
Honda are competing from assembly plants in our back
yard...the old oligopoly has crumbled, not so much from
globalization, but from upstart domestic competition"
(October 28, 2005). In the parts sector, 80% of the US
industry is non-union and many of these plants pay less
than half the wages at Delphi (non-union parts also
increase the incentive to outsource even more from the
assembly plants).
The issue is not so different in Canada where the
overall industry is in fact doing well, but non-union
auto majors are winning a larger share of the market.
Here too Toyota and Honda won't be organized through
business as usual and neither will the parts industry,
where the level of unionization was once close to 80%
and is now approaching 40%. Unless the CAW shows the
same verve which unions showed in the 1930s when they
were able to organize workers in spite of times much
tougher than today (and in spite of dramatically fewer
resources than today's unions), breakthroughs in
unionization simply won't happen. In the 1930s, for
example, mineworkers sent 100 organizers to organize
steel workers so miners would not be isolated.
Although the auto companies are global, production is
overwhelmingly regional: cars sold in North America are
largely assembled in North America and made of parts
produced here. This makes organizing all the more
possible, especially if it is seen in cross-border
terms. Why couldn't the CAW and UAW, for example,
jointly declare: that the 10 major parts plants will be
organized; that the longer it takes, the more
disruption the entire industry will face; and that
there is no point moving form the US to Canada or
vice-versa because we will be there to organize (and
into Mexico as well)? And why would the UAW not put
US$200 million of its ever increasing and unused $900
million strike fund to such use, if only to defend its
own members? 3. Opposition to free trade is
nevertheless necessary.
Blaming globalization and free trade for everything can
be a diversion from more basic issues. Yet corporate
mobility does remain a threat and this will increase as
we escalate our fights. If we see the issue not as
other workers taking our jobs, but as the freedom of
corporations to do what they want with production
versus the ability of workers to influence their lives
and communities, then fighting free trade is a matter
of democracy (workers' freedom versus corporate
freedoms), of joining with other in the community to
fight the unilateral power of corporations, and of
international solidarity to avoid the ratcheting down
all global working standards.
To limit corporate threats of shutting down plants, it
makes sense to revive a variant of the former Canada-US
auto pact and use the leverage of the market to assert
that investing in North America is a condition for
making profits here. Such a pact to constrain
corporations and gain some controls over investment
flows would necessarily be extended to include Mexico
and Mexican workers. This couldn't be done alone: it
would mean a commitment on the part of unions far
beyond anything to date to join the global justice
movement. In turn, such a campaign might offer the
wider movement the kind of concrete example it needs of
alternatives to free or simply fairer trade in favour
of planned trade. 4. There is a need to question what
we produce.
The big 'no-no' within auto unions in North America is
questioning what kind of products workers are making.
This was not always the case. In the early 1950s, the
UAW was a national leader in calling for small but
safe, fuel-efficient vehicles. Leaving this decision to
the companies has neither helped auto workers nor
consumers. Time and again, the companies gave up on
this less-profitable part of the market to concentrate
on higher-profit big vehicles only to see its
competitors use this as a base for taking market share.
Now, an important part of the problems at the Big Three
of GM, Ford and Chrysler are not only cost but the
product. Where are autoworkers on this issue today?
The issue has been avoided in part because of the
belief that the companies know best and in part because
any criticism might hurt sales and therefore the jobs
people depend on. The problem is that whether or not
the companies know what their doing in terms of their
own interest, there is no reason to think it coincides
with the collective interest of auto workers or workers
more generally. And had we been pushing for vehicles
(and an entire transport policy) more sensitive to
environmental concerns - as we were warned to do by
environmentalists pointing to the trajectory of global
warming and the inevitability of rising gas prices -
auto and transport sector jobs might actually be more
secure today.
Consider one example. The Ford engine plant in Windsor
makes large engines. It has been clear for some time
that this could not last. Why is the union not out
front mobilizing publicly for Ford to move to develop
new kinds of engines, to convert the Windsor facility
to produce them, and to make any monies given to Ford
by the Canadian and provincial government conditional
on such changes? This may not offer immediate answers
to those laid-off, but it would position the union,
both in the community and nationally, as leading on a
social issue and this would be part of developing the
capacity to perhaps influence the direction of Ford and
positively affect jobs down the road. 5. There is space
to negotiate decent contracts.
It needs to be pointed out that the auto industry is
not leaving North America but competing to come in.
Overcapacity is more of an issue than plants leaving.
In Canada, because of the $0.85 dollar (in terms of the
US$) and health care costs, workers in the Big Three
continue to have space to negotiate decent contracts.
AS the CAW pointed out in a recent presentation,
Canadian Big three workers are $10 per hour cheaper (or
$20 thousand per worker yearly) than in the US. It is
true that Canadian parts workers must confront the
falling level of unionization in both Canada and the
US. But much of the low-wage, low-capital section of
the Canadian industry departed in the 1980s, leaving an
industry that is mid to high tech in value-added and
quality-based. This sector has the advantage that it is
not as easily moved, and that it must be located close
to just-in-time assembly plants. Of all the vehicles
assembled in North American, 1 in 6 are assembled in
southern Ontario, with a huge parts industry therefore
arrayed around Ontario as well.
A crucial question, however, is what to focus on in
bargaining. Working time stands out for three powerful
reasons. First, it is quite amazing that while
productivity has been growing (output per hour has
doubled since the first wave of concessions in the
1980s), workers are left with less and less of their
own time. Second, while higher wages in the Big Three
increase the gap with other workers, more time off is
solidaristic in terms of sharing existing jobs. Third,
and this is especially important in the US, the attempt
to limit the impact of job loss through income security
and higher pensions has increased costs for the Big
Three in a way that disadvantages them relative to
non-union assembly plants. But paid time off is
something the non-union plants tend to follow to avoid
unionization (or at least it can become a major issue
in organizing). So negotiating paid time off is
actually a better response even from the narrow
perspective of 'competitiveness'.
The time to negotiate paid time off may not be only
when things are going well. It may be that this is more
likely to be achieved when there are layoffs and the
issue is solidarity to limit the layoffs (the original
UAW Ford contract in the 1940s provided for going to 32
hour weeks before layoffs took place, a reflection of
the solidaristic culture then). Solidarity may also be
invoked to limit overtime when some are called back and
many remain off work. In most cases, the company will
plan to reduce the workforce even when the upturn comes
and so limiting overtime might become a permanent union
policy. 6. Militancy is not enough.
Worker militancy is fundamental to everything else. If
there no struggle over everyday issues and wages and
benefits, there is unlikely to be struggles over
anything. Parts workers do have power - in some ways
even more power than workers in assembly - because they
can shut down a significant range of assembly plants.
But militancy itself comes up against barriers that are
real and not just propaganda: non-union plants,
products that are not selling, corporations threatening
to move abroad. Sometimes this demands new strategies.
For example, if one plant is constantly disrupting
overall production, the companies may move it. But if
disruptions are strategically spread across various
plants at different times, no one plant can be targeted
by the companies.
This strategy, too, will come up against limits. The
key is that when workers come up against a wall in
fighting back, the question must not be how to retreat
but how to knock down that wall or how to scale it.
That is when we have to go beyond the everyday role of
the union and raise larger issues, deepen the
involvement of the members, and build broader class and
social alliances. 7. A rethinking of unions is needed.
A common thread running through all of this statement
is that: (a) in fighting concessions and building
unions, the need is to act now, and not wait for
further initiatives from the corporations; and (b) the
constant importance of building the capacity of workers
to respond so we can, in fact, have more meaningful
options in the future. Over the past almost thirty
years of neoliberalism, corporations and the economy
have gone through remarkable transformations. Unions
too have changed, but not always in positive ways and
not always in ways adequate to taking on the new
economic and political challenges. It is therefore
central to any successful working class response that
workers think about their unions and ask how they too
might be transformed. This is the difficult but
increasingly unavoidable question that workers and
unionists, and socialists and the Left more generally,
cannot avoid. aOc
aO"Sam Gindin teaches at York University and is retired
from the CAW. Other Resources on Delphi and the 'New
Concessions'
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
02:29 PM
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November 04, 2005
makin wal nutz ????
announcement:
there is now
an association of walmart workers
hhhmmmmn
musical question:
is the formation
of a ghost
of unions future
an effective way to haunt wal mart's
sleep today ???
======================================
latimes:
"The United Food and Commercial Workers union
formed Wake Up Wal-Mart
earlier this year to push for changes
in what it deems bad labor practices
at the company"
-----------------
"deems"
that's journalese
for we're weeners ----------------------
" The Service Employees International Union
provided seed money for Wal-Mart Watch
a nonprofit group that also opposes
the company's business practices"
"Wake Up Wal-Mart stresses
that it is not attempting
to form a union"
" But simply organize Wal-Mart workers in as wide a way
as possible "
"They are reaching out and offering the workers a service"
but they are also laying out the possibility of workers beginning to work together," sez Harley Shaiken
"So as an individual,
you don't have to confront
the largest employer in the world.
You can do it as a group."
.
"Paul Blank, director of Wake Up Wal-Mart,
said he hopes to reach 100,000 employees
in the next several weeks
to offer free membership
in the association"
"Any employee who signs up
will have access to a Web site
that includes a list of
company's ongoing legal battles,
a toll-free help line
and a link to a recently disclosed memo
outlining the company's attempts
to cut health care "
sounds wobbly
but
smells weebly
without
an action
this all
amounts
to little more
then growing stuff in the dark
won't work
unless its mushrooms
or pale aspergrass
------------------------------------------------
this i like though
very much ...
"Wake Up Wal-Mart raised money
to provide $200 in health care assistance funds
to 50 uninsured workers
since
Wal-Mart does not provide
adequate health care benefits
to its employees"
nice agitprop
plenty of smaltz
as in ....
" That money was raised
through 102 Halloween candy fundraisers
that the group
and its supporters held at Walmarts
throughout the country
to highlight health care issues
Blank said more money will be raised
in the future for health care assistance"
damn well better its a beaut of a drive
----------------------------------------------
other site services:
"The site informs employees
they may be eligible for unemployment compensation
if their hours have been cut
-- along with a link to state unemployment offices
It explains overtime pay
equal employment rights
rights regarding
occupational safety and health
workers compensation
and the Family and Medical Leave Act"
blah blah blah
no zing no zest
no gold tooth smile into the camera
Joe Hansen, president of the UFCW :
"Wal-Mart Workers of America
will mobilize and empower
Wal-Mart workers
to change Wal-Mart
into a responsible corporation."
can black and his gang
become as good at door belling
as the Witness Propagation guyz
they're gonna need to
but hey
there's a million souls to win ....
--------------------------------------------
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
02:09 PM
|
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November 02, 2005
burke's law my ass septa sucks from the top
progs need a brain wash every month or so
cause to be useful
to the rest of us
they have to regenerate their specialness
one varient
their laughable
fucking sense
of a mountain top
above the dust and fog
view
of the klass struggle
Even back when my political sensibilities were more party-line progressive than they are now, I was always uneasy about the expectation that any given action by a labor union mandatorily demanded unquestioning support.
Partly that’s the consequence of growing up with a father who represented management in labor disputes. Not just my father’s views on things, but also some of his concrete experiences (like the time that someone showily broke into his office and messed up papers during one negotiation, to ’send a message’), were persuasive to me as a young adult that there was a morally complex terrain involved in modern unionism, that any given strike or labor action required independent assessment rather than reflexive endorsement. Heck, even my dad thought some strikes were legitimate, and that unions were an important institution. Near the end of his life, he was sometimes bothered, in fact, by the waning of the union movement: my sense was that he preferred arbitration with many union leaders to some of the kinds of workplace litigation he was increasingly involved in. I once saw a videotape he did for non-union workplaces about how to handle drives to unionize, and he went well beyond explaining what their legal obligations were: the first and last thing he said, I recall, was that any employer who thought that a lack of a union was a license to squeeze his employees was going to get a union and he was going to deserve every consequence that followed from that.
So, for example, the proposition that Wal-Mart employees need collective representation that aggressively stands up for their interests strikes me as unquestionable. The only solution for predatory employment practices in cases where workers have few if any alternative sources of employment and woefully unfair terms of labor is unionization. You have to have a legally protected right to unionize or to bargain collectively in a free society, and some strikes or labor actions deserve the general endorsement of a public, even when those strikes inconvenience us.
That support is for me, and I think it ought to be for anyone, given only on a case-by-case basis. Some strikes I simply can’t work up any support for. It’s hard for me, like almost everyone else in the Philadelphia area, to feel any real support or warmth for the striking mass transit workers who have crippled transportation this week. It doesn’t affect me personally, though it has increased my wife’s commuting times due to the big spike in cars on the road. However, this is a very public event: it completely changes and complicates the landscape of daily life for a large number of people in the metropolitan area, most especially poorer Philadelphians who are dependent on bus transport and schoolchildren in the city who use vouchers to travel on public transportation to get to school. Moreover, if the union gets even some of what it is asking for in health care benefits, the cost of that is going to come out of the pockets of transport riders in some fashion or another. A strike against a private business is one thing: in a way, you can usually just avoid engaging it altogether, work with some other business for the time being. This is different.
The union involved doesn’t seem to recognize the difference, and in failing to do so, neatly explains the eclipse of the modern labor movement in America. They’ve made no meaningful effort to speak to the public in advance of the strike, to prepare the ground, no attempt to explain or frame their actions in that arena. They’ve acted in a way that has huge public consequences with almost no sense of engagement with that public, and this particular union has done that quite a few times in the last decade. The general public are treated largely as spectators with their noses pressed to the glass, watching some private tableau unfold inside a distant interior. This is equally true for the managers on the other side of the negotiations, of course, but that’s the problem. People expect them to be inscrutable, distant and self-interested (even though they are also public servants); they have a different expectation of labor. Labor’s decline began in the United States almost as soon as it won legitimacy as a public institution, as soon as the right to organize was enshrined (and also obstructed) by statute, precisely because of a consistent inability to articulate its actions through an alliance with some larger general interest. That accelerated in the late 1970s and early 1980s; now many unions don’t even bother to try to pretend that the public consequences of their labor actions are worth more than a cursory address, or maintain incorrectly that the public interest is best addressed not at the site of particular actions, but instead through general political engagement at the level of national and state elections. (There are very important and exciting exceptions to this, but that’s just it: they’re exceptions.)
As long as unions seem too inwardly self-interested, anybody who has a cultural ethos that values labor in terms beyond the contractual and financial, who has a sense of professional pride and commonsensical tolerance for small-scale workplace injustices, who sees their labor in relation to some larger obligation (a sensibility that spans across social class in the United States) is likely to feel uneasy with contemporary unionism. As long as unions seem as obsessed with bureaucratic over-regulation of workplace obligations as any middle-manager straight out of “The Office”, as eager to return all their members to some mediocre mean of on-the-job effort, or as uninterested in the long-term viability of the institutions for which they labor as stock-price obsessed CEOs, they’re going to turn off many potential members. Yes, these are all caricatures, exaggerated by the news media, but I suspect many people in their working lives have encountered a few vividly personal examples as well as telling public anecdotes that verify the caricatures in some respect.
Certainly that’s what’s happening in Philadelphia now. Most people would probably be annoyed by the strike no matter what the union did, but it would help to see that the union is at least trying to care about the consequences.
-----------------------------
SEPTA Strike
It's time to trade tired souls for tired feet
by Fabricio Rodriguez
October 11, 2005
Young Philly Politics
http://youngphillypolitics.com/node/269
SEPTA workers have an uphill battle building public
support for there fight to win a good contract. Over
the past nine months I have talked about this fight
with thousands of people in Philadelphia and my pleas
for support have been meet with replies of 'we have to
pay for health care, they should too' and 'SEPTA has
terrible customer service, the workers are over paid
and don't deserve our support.' Surprisingly, these
sentiment have most often been heard from
'progressives' and from many working-class
Philadelphians. These responses, however, are
uninformed, oversimplified and lack a broader strategic
prospective of what progressives should be fighting
for.
SEPTA management is not asking for reasonable health
care compromises. A closer look at what SEPTA has asked
for it is clear that they aim at giving workers a bad
deal and hope to break the union. SEPTA claims that
these drastic cuts stem from lingering financial
difficulties. It is true that our growing transit
system needs a sustainable and dedicated funding
source. However, what SEPTA and most of the press has
failed to mention is the fact that SEPTA has become a
holding tank and handout job for the politically
connected. This lumbering bureaucracy has nearly one
manager for every worker! If something needs to be cut,
we should look closely at slimming down General Manager
Faye Moore's burgeoning staff first.
SEPTA workers have made sacrifices. In fact, the first
health care compromises came in 1989 when SEPTA workers
began returning the Cost of Living Agreement to defray
the rising costs of health care. SEPTA workers pay for
all of their prescription, dental and vision and 30% of
their medical for the first two years and for every
doctor visit (co-pay) and prescriptions after the first
two years. In contrast, SEPTA management (remember,
there is nearly one manager for every worker), get 100%
health care coverage from day one. SEPTA workers have
forgone any raises for two years. These savings have
played a big role in keeping the system solvent.
Management raises, however--you can guess what the
answer is. Additionally, SEPTA workers have given up
any sick pay for the most common, short term
sicknesses. This concession was made to help meet
rising health care costs for the workers. Any illness
that keeps a workers off the job for three days or less
are paid for by the workers themselves up to six days
per year. Management gets full sick pay from day one.
This health care giveback alone has saved SEPTA
millions of dollars per year. SEPTA has not only
proposed 20% premium increase but also 20% cuts to the
benefit. They are asking for a 40% give back and cuts
from both ends of the workers health care. SEPTA
workers have made big and reasonable sacrifices for
there good health care but this is not just about these
benefits. SEPTA management wants much more.
The list of demands that SEPTA has put on the table
belie more than dollar and cent practicality. SEPTA is
asking workers to give up maternity leave, some
vacation time, earned and sick days and all weekly
overtime. Perhaps the most revealing demands have to do
with the welfare and the strength of the union itself.
TWU has proven over the passed few decades that it is a
strong union with a high level of solidarity among its
workers. The last strike in 1998 last for forty days
with virtually no scabbing and strike breaking. SEPTA
wants to put an end to decades of effective trade
unionism by one of our cities most diverse unions.
SEPTA is demanding that unions give back the ability to
collect Authority Dues to represent workers and that
unions concede SEPTA authority to subcontract work.
SEPTA wants to strip the unions from having any say in
lay-offs. What reason would any member have to stay in
the union with a pay cut, a huge chunk missing from
their health care and no job protection? SEPTA
management wants to break this union.
Beyond the plain questions of fairness there is the
question of what progressives will sacrifice if this
fight is one that we sit out. TWU Local 234 is a union
that is closely connected with our communities. Most of
the SEPTA drivers are African American and live with
the neighborhoods of Philadelphia. These workers are
pumping untold millions of dollars to diverse
neighborhoods outside of Center City. This fact,
accounts for the callous disregard for their situation
from many liberals. These working people are people
whom most of Philadelphia's liberal, white
establishment rarely encounter. TWU Local 234 is
engaged in the community and in local left politics
despite the isolated myopia of much of Philly's web-
based politicos.
TWU mobilizes its members for community events,
activities and politics in the communities that the
members are based. In the course of building community
support with TWU Local 234, the members of Jobs with
Justice have been asked to go everywhere but downtown
by union leadership. TWU members mobilized for Seth
Williams in north and west Philadelphia, realms that
are often all but invisible from the blogosphere. If
this union loses ground and strength in this contract
fight, the Philadelphia progressive movement will
suffer a hit to one of its most organized, grassroots
and neighborhood based allies. The need for the
advocacy for a good contract on the part of the
Philadelphia 'left' goes beyond these short-term
reasons, however.
The longest standing committee in Jobs with Justice is
our Health Care Action Committee. This committee is
dedicated to mobilizing for strategic wins that build a
broad based constituency for universal health care
(UHC). In our experience, one of the biggest flaw with
the universal health care movement is that it is based
on big ideas and lacks any strategy for winning. Jobs
with Justice has mapped out two broad strategies for
moving toward UHC: 1) make UHC struggle real and
locally relevant 2) stop cost shifting. Jobs with
Justice believes that in order to make the big,
technical ideas of (UHC) relevant our actions must be
paired with local struggles in which working people can
win something and in which we build a long term
constituency for comprehensive health care reform. If
we cannot make UHC relevant to working people, UHC will
never be a realistic goal. In practical terms, that
means holding our ground on health care, especially for
large employers. While we develop this constituency we
have to make sure that the sector of society which has
power and the means to make UHC a reality (corporations
and large employers) are forced to feel the pinch of
the healthcare crisis. As long as employers are able to
patch over the problem of a crumbling health care
system by shifting rising costs onto workers, we will
move further and further from reform. By the same
token, when we hold ground on health care and
administrators and shareholders see it come out of
profits, we push those with power in our society toward
making a change for the better.
Philadelphia progressives should stand with these
workers because it is just, important to strengthening
progressive politics in Philadelphia, TWU Local 234 are
huge economic force in many of Philadelphia's most
underserved communities and because it is strategically
important for transit and health care reform. Nearly 50
years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a group of
largely African-American workers have declared that
they have given enough and are poised and ready to, as
Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'substitute tired feet for
tired souls, and walk the streets.' Progressives and
workers should be ready to march in solidarity with
them. This fight is also about building and supporting
the grassroots, neighborhood based, diverse
institutions important to the progressive community.
Like in Montgomery in 1955 we should recall the
sentiments of Martin Luther King Jr., 'In all our
actions we must stick together. Unity is the great need
of the hour, and if we are united we can get many of
the things that we not only desire but which we justly
deserve.'
Fabricio Rodriguez is the Director of Philadelphia Jobs
with Justice a coalition of 53 labor unions, community
groups, faith and student organizations. Jobs with
Justice is dedicated to winning workers' right and
social and economic justice by using the principles of
solidarity, reciprocity, militancy and direct action.
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
07:06 PM
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November 01, 2005
afl- er pies plan december DC org rights mob
the sweeney gobs
are orgin a big nat mod
for the wash town
december 10th
here below find details
posted without comment....
so far
==========================
Working families and their allies are gearing
up for the nation's largest-ever mobilization to
support workers' freedom to form unions and bargain
collectively. Throughout the week of Dec. 5-10,
thousands of workers in 63 cities--and the number is
growing daily--will take the fight to restore workers'
freedom to form unions to the White House, statehouses
and front doors of employers that deny workers' rights.
The nationwide events are part of a massive global
mobilization on Dec. 10, International Human Rights
Day, the anniversary of the 1948 ratification of the
United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
which includes the freedom of workers to form unions.
Some 92 percent of private-sector U.S. employers force
workers to attend anti-union meetings by threatening
them with discipline or dismissal if they refuse and 75
percent hire anti-worker firms to fight organizing
attempts, according to an Oct. 18 report by the
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions'
Annual Study of Trade Union Rights Violations.
Clyde Rucker is one of those workers. Speaking before a
crowd of more than 100 representatives of union,
community, civil rights and religious groups at a Dec.
10 Voice@Work planning meeting at the AFL-CIO's
national office in Washington, D.C., Rucker described
how he was fired for trying to form a union.
Rucker says he was fired in April 2003 from his job as
a customer service representative at Verizon Wireless
in Laurel, Md., after he talked with workers about
forming a union with the Communications Workers of
America. He says company officials constantly watched
him and pressured him to stop pushing for a union.
"We have to fight everywhere for the right to join a
union," says Rucker. "We have to become more vigilant
and continue to speak out, Rucker says. "Corporate
injustice anywhere is a threat to workers everywhere."
Dec. 10 Actions Set for United States and Around the
Globe
Across the United States, at rallies, town hall
meetings, candlelight vigils and teach-ins , union
members and their allies will highlight the obstacles
workers face when seeking to join a union at work and
showcase strategies for the overcoming those obstacles.
In Washington, D.C., a broad-based coalition will hold
a huge rally Dec. 8 near the White House to protest the
Bush administration's plan to take away bargaining
rights from federal workers in the Defense and Homeland
Security departments.
Workers in Boston plan to march throughout the city,
stopping at workplaces where workers are trying to form
unions, before holding a rally at the state capitol.
Teach-ins are scheduled at Georgetown University and
other colleges others across the nation to inform
students of the plight of America's workers. In six
communities in four states, workers plan to distribute
fliers asking the public to support striking Verizon
Wireless workers.
Workers taking part in Dec. 10 actions in the United
States will be joined by workers around the world--from
countries as diverse as Bosnia, Cambodia and
Bahrain--who will hold events to support human rights,
including workers' freedom to form unions. AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney will join hundreds of other
global union leaders in Hong Kong Dec. 10 for a rally
to coincide with the meeting of the World Trade
Organization. Employee Free Choice Act Would Strengthen
Workers' Freedom to Join Unions
During the Voice@Work meeting, Rep. Linda Sanchez
(D-Calif.) called on community groups to press members
of Congress to support the Employee Free Choice Act.
Introduced by a bipartisan coalition in Congress, S.
842 and H.R. 1696 would strengthen protections for
workers' freedom to choose a union by requiring
employers to recognize a union after a majority of
workers signs cards authorizing union representation.
It also would provide for mediation and arbitration of
first-contract disputes and authorize stronger
penalties for violation of the law when workers seek to
form a union.
With 204 Employee Free Choice Act co-sponsors in the
House, Sanchez says another 14 are needed to force a
vote the Republican leadership to bring the bill to the
House floor for a vote.
"Dec. 10 is about issues all over the world," AFL-CIO
Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson told the
Voice@Work meeting. "We have to be passionate and put
our hearts and bodies on the line," says
Chavez-Thompson. "Dec. 10 is the best time to do that.
On Dec. 10 all our issues come together: civil rights,
human rights and women's rights."
"For all practical purposes, Americans have lost the
freedom to form unions," Sweeney says. "Our labor laws
are weak and so feebly enforced that...workers join the
union in spite the law." Strong Community Support for
Workers' Struggles Form Unions
"There is lawlessness in the American workplace," says
David Bonior, chairman of the workers' advocacy group
American Rights at Work. Many of the tactics employers
use to prevent workers from forming unions "are
perfectly legal, but they are wrong," says Bonior, who
took part in the Voice@Work meeting.
A study by Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University
found that private-sector employers illegally fire
employees for union activity in at least 25 percent of
all organizing efforts. Three in four use workers'
supervisors to pressure workers to vote against the
union. Many employers also threaten to close or move
the company if workers choose a union.
The fight for workers' rights has drawn strong support
from community groups and political leaders. "Civil
rights are labor rights and labor rights are human
rights," says Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's
Washington office. Speaking to the Voice@Work meeting,
Shelton says the nation's oldest civil rights group was
eager to be part of the Dec. 10 coalition. For
instance, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond recorded a public
service announcement that promotes Dec. 10,
International Human Rights Day, activities. Take Action
Tell Congress: Restore workers' freedom to form unions.
Send a message to your U.S. senators and representative
urging them to co-sponsor the Employee Free Choice Act.
_______________________________________________________
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
01:06 PM
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gail heads east
the tutes setting up a manhattan bureau
under the ice and fire
aegis of gail sondergard
funded entirely
by a grant from
the bray foundation
details at eleven ...
=============================
==========================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
01:03 PM
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