January 29, 2006
horse turds away
WANT to hear some good news for the labor movement? The percentage of American workers who are union members remained almost steady in the private sector last year.
The bad news is that the figure stood at 7.8 percent — less than a third of the rate of the early 1970's.
Even worse for labor, the rate of unionization has further to fall, according to most labor economists and experts in industrial relations. "In the immediate future, unions will carry on shriveling in the private sector," said Richard Freeman, a professor of economics at Harvard.
While union leaders attribute the weakness to everything from insufficient organizing vigor to a hostile political environment, unions, in a way, are victims of their own success. They have obtained better wage and benefit packages for workers, and in an increasingly competitive business world, that is working against them. Businesses in some competitive industries cannot afford unions.
In the United States, unions may have done their job only too well. Last year, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, private-sector workers who were members of unions typically made 23.1 percent more per week than their nonunion colleagues, up from a 22.4 percent premium in 2004.
In a recent study, David Blanchflower, professor of economics at Dartmouth, and Alex Bryson, a researcher at the Policy Studies Institute in Britain, found that this wage premium was higher in the United States than in most other big industrial countries — including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Britain and New Zealand.
This success is coming at a steep price. The high premium, Mr. Bryson said, "could well be why management is particularly anti-union in the U.S."
Pressured by increasing competition from producers in cheap labor markets like China and nonunion rivals at home, businesses are resisting unions with an increasing fervor. Union organizing has plummeted.
The number of representation elections in American workplaces has declined sharply. And the share of these elections won by unions is down to about half, from more than 70 percent in the 1950's. And even as employment in nonunion businesses has grown, union jobs have disappeared. Companies either moved them overseas or, overwhelmed by competition, eliminated the work entirely.
"The more competitive a market the more limited is unions' bargaining power and ability to organize," said Barry T. Hirsch, a professor of economics at Trinity University in San Antonio. "Unions raise wages and so reduce profits. This is less and less feasible the more competitive the environment."
Consider the ailing auto industry. In the past two months, the top two American automakers announced plans to cut some 60,000 jobs, most of them union positions. That's roughly the number of nonunion jobs created in the American transplants of the German, Japanese and Korean car companies who are dining quite nicely at the expense of the American companies once known as the Big Three, and at a table that used to be their exclusive domain.
While the auto sector remains heavily unionized, relative to other businesses, this dynamic helped to drive down union penetration in the industry to around 30 percent in 2004 from about 60 percent 20 years ago. Competition has ravaged unions in other sectors. Trucking de-unionized after the industry was deregulated in the 1970's — prompting a stampede of nonunion owner-operators into the market. Unionization in the steel industry has dropped by half in the past 20 years as the big integrated steel mills have come under pressure from foreign steelmakers and nonunion domestic minimills.
The central problem for unions stems from a core strategy: to organize all the businesses serving a given market, and thus avoid putting unionized companies at a disadvantage relative to their competition. "One of unions' most fundamental jobs is to take wages and benefits out of competition," said Bruce S. Raynor, the general president of Unite Here, the union of workers in the textile and hotel industries. While this strategy worked well when a few industrial giants had a virtual lock on the nation's consumers, it started to fall apart as deregulation and trade liberalization took hold in the 1970's, ushering in an era of more intense competition in business.
"Regulation in many cases put a floor under competition," said Ruth Milkman, director of the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California, Los Angeles. "In a way it made unionization possible by eliminating cutthroat competition. In manufacturing what's changed is international competition."
Despite the long odds, unions still have potential pockets of growth. In the public sector, where there is little competition, unionization rates remain at more than 35 percent. Mr. Bryson said that even in the private sector, there were still industries in which competition was modest and corporations could raise prices without fear of losing markets to rivals. On economic grounds, these industries would seem prime candidates for union expansion.
What kind of businesses are we talking about? Hospitals would be one place to look. Energy companies would be another. Or why not an even bigger prize? Perhaps the labor movement should forget about cars and focus instead on a company that has crushed much of its competition: Wal-Mart.
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Posted by herb jr. jr. at
11:57 AM
January 26, 2006
come in planet occupation...come in
here's an alert
to all invisible cadre
out there
planning to join
our national plant
sitz krieg crusade
--------------------------------------------------
when in the course of human events
we the wagery
take a few of the man's plants hostage
maybe we'd better damn well
make fucking sure
we aren't
makin' the man happy
motto of the moment
don't sit down on a lemon
we gotta make sure we grab real long term gems here
not
tomorrow's company scrap
============================================
take ford
my take
seize three widely disparate
winner plants
not the old barnicle bills
sure thatas where the axe will fall
but grab a plant
ready for
davy jones locker and ...
well
u take a bum site
and you're fuck
the boss gets a brain wave on dat two ..
" the heck with a cop charge
lets burn em out
from within
what say we
get our moles
inside there
to set the mother a blaze
and blame the good old union boys for it
and collect on our insurance to boot .."
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
11:22 AM
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Comments (0)
January 22, 2006
mama-cita don't ...
let your sons grow up
to be day laborers
this sampling comes from:
"... 120,000 people
that gather
at more than 500 hiring sites
to look for work on a typical day"
" three-fourths
were illegal immigrants
.....more than half said
employers had cheated them
on wages in the previous two months"
"49 percent
were employed by homeowners
43 percent by construction contractors"
"employed most frequently
as construction laborers
landscapers
painters
roofers
and drywall installers"
"earned a median of $10 an hour "
"and $700 month"
-------- only 70 hours pay
in a 4 /40
or 160 hour pay period -----------------
The professors who conducted the study said the
" most surprising find
the pervasiveness of wage violations
and dangerous conditions "
"Forty-nine percent
said that in the previous two months
an employer had not paid them
for one or more days"
" Forty-four percent said
some employers did not give them
any breaks during the workday"
" while 28 percent said
employers had insulted them"
" Nine percent reported being
arrested while waiting for work"
"11 percent reported receiving police citations
and 37 percent reported being
chased away"
" 15 percent said merchants
had not let them use their bathrooms
or make purchases"
" 59 percent
were from Mexico
and
28 percent
from Central America"
"only 7 percent were born in the United States"
" Sixty percent said
day labor was their first occupation
in the United States"
"Nearly three-fourths said
they gathered at day labor sites
five or more days a week
with the average laborer
finding work three to three-and-a-half days a week"
" In good months,
day laborers earn $1,400,
and in bad months,
especially winter months, $500"
" 44 percent of those surveyed
had been day laborers
for less than a year"
" 30 percent had done that work
for one to three years"
" Twenty-six percent
said they were day laborers
for more than three years"
" Two-thirds said they had children"
"73 percent said they were placed
in hazardous working conditions,"
" like digging ditches,
working with chemicals,
or on roofs or scaffolding. "
" employers often put day laborers
into dangerous jobs
that regular workers were reluctant to do"
"One-fifth said that in the past year
they had suffered injuries
requiring medical attention"
" 60 percent said their injuries
caused them to miss more than a week of work"
" 54 percent of those injured
said they had not received
the medical care they needed"
"day
labor centers "
" operate as hiring halls
where workers and employers arrange to meet
These centers,
usually created in partnerships
with local government or community organizations,
often require workers and employers
to register,
helping to reduce abuses.
The centers provide shelter,
bathrooms and water
- sometimes even English lessons -
while workers wait.
Many set a minimum wage,
often $10 an hour,
that employers must pay the laborers"
"The first thing to do
to improve things for day laborers
is to have more of these centers,"
sez
Pablo Alvarado,
national coordinator
of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network
--------okay maybe so .....-------------
"The second thing is to have
the government enforce
the labor laws more consistently."
--------after that market forces
will see to it
these utopia halls empty out -----------------
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
01:35 PM
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el sweeno at length
Thank you. I’m honored to be with all of you today in this prestigious forum.
The American labor movement is the only organization that speaks exclusively for working families, and I thank the National Press Club for inviting me to amplify that voice.
There is no shortage of issues facing working families in our country.
We’re in a consuming warp of national disagreement in which one heated question flows like hot lava into another.
How do we clear a storm of corporate and governmental corruption that should never have been allowed to gather?
How do we stop the packing of our courts with judges whose views on workers’ rights and civil rights should have disqualified them from even being considered?
Indeed, what is the right way to conclude a war that was started the wrong way in the first place?
These are all huge issues that compel confrontation.
But we’re facing a question of even greater magnitude that is being ignored by leaders of one party and avoided by leaders of the other. And that question is: “What are we going to do about the destruction of good jobs in our country -- the jobs that for the past half century helped us create the largest middle class, the most dynamic economy and the strongest democracy in the history of the world?”
Headlines from recent months chronicle the destruction.
From the Washington Post: “Consumer Prices Increase, Outstrip Wages.”
From Reuters, “China to Service United Fleet.”
Another from the Post: “Trade Gap Ballooned in October.”
A cover headline from The Economist warned: “Danger Time for America.”
A headline from the Associated Press: “Tough Times Ahead for Middle Class Worker; Manufacturing Jobs Vanishing From Our Shores.”
From the New York Times: “IBM Freezes Its Pension Plans.”
From the Wall Street Journal: “Growth in Medical Cost Slows As Firms Shift Tab to Workers.”
And another from the Wall Street Journal carrying the counter-intuitive headline, “Wal-Mart Urges Congress to Raise the Minimum Wage.” The Wal-Mart CEO said the company was urging the long-overdue federal increase because, and I quote, “Our core customers aren’t making enough money to spend enough money.”
Finally, the New York Times weighed in with a story we already knew was coming: “U.S. Poverty Rate Was Up Last Year.” It was the first time on record that household incomes failed to increase for five straight years — and that record includes the Great Depression.
That Depression followed the only other time in modern history when the White House, the Supreme Court and both houses of Congress ALL were controlled by one anti-expansion, anti-working family, anti-union political party.
Our country was headed in the wrong direction then, so we took back control and charted a new course that spread the wealth and regulated the excesses of big business.
It is time to take control again.
Of course, headlines can’t tell the full story, but they effectively capture it. And if I could write a headline for the story I want to tell today, it would read: “The Senseless Slaughter of the Good American Job.”
We hear and read a lot about the violence in our cities, and the word most often used to describe it is “senseless” — the death of a young man here in Washington, DC over New Year’s was characterized in the media as “senseless.”
It seems to me we should use the same language not just to describe wanton acts of physical violence, but also to depict the violence being visited upon working families and our communities by the killing of good jobs.
The senseless slaughter of the good American job has been going on for the past 25 years.
It’s at the core of a corporate-driven strategy to compete in the global marketplace by degrading work and workers, rather than competing through ingenuity -- competing through privatization, deregulation and de-unionization rather than by innovation.
Since 1985, the global labor force has effectively doubled, with the entrance of 1.4 billion new workers from China, India and the former Soviet Union. And in the absence of new rules to prevent it, corporations have pitted the new workers against American workers in a merciless race to the bottom.
The result has been a perfect storm of outsourcing, off-shoring, tax evasion, lay offs, work speedups, wage cuts, health care cuts, pension cuts, shifting risks, bashing unions and short-changing communities. It is a storm that has swamped the boats of middle class workers and destroyed the frail crafts of ethnic and immigrant workers.
New York Times writer Louis Uchitelle describes with great clarity how we ‘ve come to this state in his new book, The Disposable American, due out from Knopf in March, and I quote:
“Far more than in the past, America lives with a chronically floating, low-wage workforce, one that would not exist if the deterioration in pay and training, and the acquiescence to layoffs, had not made inroads into the dignity of work .”
The failure of our national leaders to preserve and create good jobs is tattooed on the souls of 30 million workers who, Mr. Uchitelle explains, were involuntarily displaced from their jobs from 1981 to 2001.
But wounded workers aren’t the only casualties of the corporate job-killing strategy. It is also a self-destructive strategy because it leaves businesses with consumers who don’t have enough money to spend or save.
It leaves government with more demand for public services and subsidies … and fewer taxpayers to pay for them.
And it leaves employees frustrated and distrustful of their employers, fearful for their future.
For a capitalist democracy that runs on equal parts hope, self-sufficiency, innovation, productivity and civic participation, the corporate-driven strategy of destroying good jobs is worse than senseless.
It is just short of suicidal. And we have no hope of changing it unless we confront it.
In just a few days in his State of the Union address, President Bush will present a far more rosy picture of our economy and the situation for working families in America.
He will likely say what he said to the Chicago Economic Club two weeks ago, when he bragged: “The American economy heads into 2006 with a full head of steam .... the American consumer is confident.”
But what if he told the American people the truth? What if he said: “Our country is headed in the wrong direction. The wrong direction on jobs. The wrong direction on health care. The wrong direction on retirement security. And the wrong direction on education. You know it and I know it, and it’s time to do something about it.”
President Bush won’t do that, but if I were President of the United States, I’d use this State of the Union speech to cement my place in history.
If I were President, I would admit to the joint session of Congress that we’re barely creating enough new jobs to match the growth in our workforce — and increasingly, the jobs we are generating are dead-end alleys.
I’d remind Congress that our trade policies have translated into over 2 million lost manufacturing jobs … just since 1998, our debt to other countries is rising by more than $1 million a minute and almost $700 billion in U.S. Treasury notes are held by China alone.
I’d insist that we reverse those policies and lift workers everywhere by demanding that workers’ rights be afforded as much protection as corporate interests in all present and future trade agreements.
I’d propose making it illegal for companies to buy or sell merchandise or services manufactured or provided under sweatshop working conditions. And I’d help working people in other countries rise above their burdens by telling Congress we’re going to lead the world in effective assistance and debt relief to developing nations.
I’d demand the repeal of our tax laws that encourage corporations to send jobs overseas. I’d call for a bill mandating that all goods and services paid for with tax dollars at any level be produced or provided in this country.
And I’d challenge Congress to quit stalling and pass universal health coverage this year so our workers can live secure lives and our corporations can compete in the global marketplace.
If I were president, I would tell corporate America it’s time to re-join our national community by investing more in workers and less in their executives.
I would give Congress a budget doubling the money we are spending on job training and education, a budget restoring the dreadful cuts in our college loan program.
And I would tell them to get busy and give hope a chance by raising the federal minimum wage.
If I were President, I would expose the 150 major U.S. corporations that are using the bankruptcy courts to abandon their commitments to provide guaranteed pensions to the workers who have enabled them to grow and profit.
And I would follow presidential tradition in my State of the Union address and introduce a special hero --- a flight attendant who’s been flying with United Airlines for 28 years and counting on a pension payment of about $3,000 a month to add to her Social Security when she retires five years from now.
A backroom deal cut that pension payment to $1200 a month and now she’s threatened with further wage and benefit cuts at a time when her CEO is being assured total compensation of more than $50 million a year.
My hero’s name is Cheryl Burns, and she’s with us today — a living example of what’s happening to good jobs and American workers. (recognize Cheryl Burns)
Finally, if I were President, I would ask every member of the House and Senate to sign on as a sponsor to the Employee Free Choice Act, which guarantees the freedom of America’s workers to come together in unions and bargain for a better life.
It will stop American employers from taking advantage of our laughable labor laws to destroy the unions that keep our middle class healthy and growing. It will make it possible for workers to join unions and add their voices to our campaign for the good jobs that guarantee economic equality and a strong democracy.
And then, my friends, my brothers and sisters, we can get on with the job of turning this country around.
Of course, we don’t expect President Bush to do any of those things. But we do expect more from our elected leaders in Congress, and we’re going to demand it.
We also know we have to expect more and demand more from ourselves.
And we know that to change the course of our country, we not only have to think outside the box of corporate control our nation has been trapped in, we have to get rid of the box.
Some may doubt that we have the capacity to do that because of the tragic split that took place in our movement last year. To twist a phrase made famous by a previous Presidential Administration … I would urge everyone to watch what we're doing -- and not what the doubters are saying.
Two years ago, we took a major step toward changing our country’s direction when we founded “Working America,” our community affiliate for workers who don’t have a union where they work. “Working America” is the most significant innovation our movement has undertaken in decades, and in its first year, we signed up 1 million members who wanted to fight for change as a part of the AFL-CIO.
Last year, Working America members worked hand-in-hand with our collective bargaining members to defeat Social Security privatization, and in November they helped break the bonds of exurban county politics to bring home a win for Tim Kaine in Virginia.
Last month, Working America launched a new online “Job Tracker” that allows its members and the public to discover not only who’s sending our jobs overseas, but which companies are violating our health and safety, environmental and labor laws.
By the end of this year, “Working America” will have 2 million members and it’s helping us build the broader and more powerful movement we need.
We’re also investing $50 million in our National Labor College so we can train our leaders of the future.
And we’ve stepped up our Voice@work campaign to expose employers who interfere with workers’ right to form and join unions. And in December, Voice@work put 60,000 people on the streets – our biggest mobilization in 15 years -- to speak out for the right of workers to choose to join a union.
Today, the Employee Free Choice Act has 208 co-sponsors in the House, including 10 Republicans, and 42 in the Senate -- and we will pass it while George Bush is in office.
If I were President, I would sign it.
At our convention last July, we made an historic decision to increase our emphasis on helping new members organize so we can build the strength we need and working families deserve.
More and more of our unions are running aggressive organizing programs and we’re seeing the results in successes like the Communications Workers victory for 16,000 workers at Cingular Wireless just since July.
This campaign shows what happens when employers respect workers’ freedom to have a voice on the job, and the organizing being done by our unions shows just how determined we are to increase our strength in our workplaces and in our nation.
We also decided to devote more resources to legislative and political advocacy and to fold up our election-cycle model and replace it with a new grassroots program that works year-in and year-out to build a vibrant movement and hold our elected representatives accountable.
We used our new model last November in California -- and we damn near “terminated the Terminator.”
This month, we used that new capacity to let our members know “who’s on our side” by issuing detailed “report cards” on the voting records of members of Congress.
And we’re taking our fight to break out of the corporate box to the state level.
You saw the first crisp punch in that fight when we overrode Governor Ehrlich’s veto of our “Fair Share” health care legislation in Maryland.
We’ve decided to break free from the gridlock of Washington and the hammerlock of national corporate health care lobbyists by launching “Fair Share” campaigns in more than 30 states. We need a simple national health care plan that covers everybody — the failure of Bush’s complicated Medicare prescription drug benefit demonstrates that. But if they won’t give us a fair health plan covering all families in all 50 states, we will “give them hell” in all 50 states.
We’re also breaking out of the corporate box by expanding our work with student activists and our other allies to pass living wage initiatives on campuses and in cities nationwide -- and by mounting campaigns in 26 states to increase state minimum wage levels.
More than 7 million workers would get a raise if the federal minimum wage were increased from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour. But we’re not waiting any longer for Congress to find its conscience.
We believe Members of Congress need to do more than find their collective conscience, they need to break out of their own corporate box by rediscovering their ethics and reconnecting with the people they were elected to serve.
We’re challenging our elected officials on both sides of the aisle to change the laws regulating lobbyists, and change the rules governing their own behavior.
And once they clear away the corporate clatter, they’ll be able to hear the voices of working families and get our country back on the right track.
Someone once said, “There are two things we must give our children. One is roots and the other is wings.”
When I was growing up in the Bronx, our family and our church provided the roots, and my dad’s union provided the wings – in the form of a good job with decent benefits so he and my mom could lift up my sisters and brother and me.
Unions are also the wings for our communities and for our entire way of life, because we help guarantee a level of prosperity for everyone, because we fight the abuse of corporate power, and because we provide a real voice for workers in politics.
The AFL-CIO and our unions are committed to be the wings of hope for working families and for America, and we will continue to spread them wide on behalf of good jobs, fairness and economic and social justice.
Thank you and God bless all of you and your families, and God bless America.
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
12:09 PM
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Comments (0)
January 20, 2006
the sweeney plan
Guarantee America’s workers
the freedom to form unions
and bargain for a better life
Give workers the same protections
as corporate interests in our trade policy
Make it illegal for companies
to buy or sell products
made in sweatshop conditions
Repeal tax laws that encourage companies
to send jobs overseas
Pass universal health care coverage
Tell corporate America
to rejoin our national community
by investing more in workers
and less in their executives
Double the money we spend
on education and job training
Raise the minimum wage
===========================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
07:18 PM
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Comments (0)
product change as a union demand
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 GM, Ford, and
Daimler-Chrysler are not only cost but the product.
Where are auto workers 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
upon which people depend. The problem is that whether
or not the companies know what they are doing in terms
of their own interest, there is no reason to think that
it coincides with the collective interest of auto
workers or workers in general. 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 develop new kinds
of engines, to convert the Windsor facility to produce
them, and to make any money given to Ford by the
Canadian and provincial governments 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.
This would be part of developing the capacity to
influence the direction of Ford and positively affect
future jobs.
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
12:57 PM
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Comments (0)
paid time off
talk about
boffo moves
here's one i think
i,ve not explored nearly enough
upping paid time off
as part of slashing
the basic work week
impact
hard to over-rate
=======================================
i posted this earlier
but never did my notes
"A crucial question:
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
increase the gap with other workers
more time off is
solidaristic in terms
of sharing existing jobs"
". Third, the attempt
to limit the impact of job loss
through income security
and higher pensions
has only increased costs
in a way that creates
a disadvantage relative
to non-union assembly plants"
" Paid time off
is
something the non-union plants
tend to follow to avoid
unionization
Therefore, negotiating paid time off
is
actually a better response
from the perspective of 'competitiveness.'
"The time to negotiate paid time off:
when there are large layoffs pending
and the issue is solidarity
to limit the layoffs"
" Solidarity
to limit overtime
when some are called back
and
many remain off work"
" In most cases, corporations
plan to reduce the workforce
when the upturn
comes
limiting overtime generates jobs "
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
12:43 PM
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gale's gals make me mellow
i don't get myself these days...
since gale set up the manhattan office
and brought in the bi coastal struggle vixens
i've developed an un-accostomed inner calm ....
some close to me are asking
"herb where'd ya leave yer balls at "
========================================
no brothers and sisters
its not what u think
i ain't just
'that much more stewed 'lately
sure
there's
the usual heavy measure
of golden winkiery
fresh beer
streaming past my lips ...
life 's surest comp plan
after all
is a frosty can
of
liquid wheat flakes
no thats
running about
as always
remember
we have certain rites
here at the ranch
like others might maintain
an eternal flame
we
maintain
an endless river of brew
flowing in lusty dudgeon
thru the premisses ...
-------------------------------------
nope
same old same olds
---even up anted ----
can't explain
my recent spate
of humanistical good will
ya i hear ya ...
"but herb
does this new spirit
of let it be ..
cross klass lines?????"
NOPE
" i'm just lettin the gals do the tutes
heavy lifting "
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
08:55 AM
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Comments (0)
newz from columbia
after chigs wild talk
about his three months
living with the fire apes
of the sierra madre .....
gunning down union cadre seems rather tame but...
====================
"It's not as easy to get away
with killing a labor
leader as it was five years ago"
thats a Bogota gub hack speaking
curbing the para gun slingers
appears to be
a very trying task ...
the ILO :
"impunity prevails."
"Fewer than 1 in a hundred cases
are ever resolved"
"At least 30 union leaders
are killed in Colombia
each year"
nasty place to run a union
blue ribbon winner
columbia by the way is the epicenter
of the planet wide
boycott of killer Coke
no not the powdered mountain grown kind
no
the boycotts agin
the trans nat
bottled and phizzy
kid's liquid kind
seems Coke's local Columbia outfits
uses slug spitting
chowderhead services
when they need
to trim staff
collective bargaining ambitions
now that's
the real thing !!!!!!!!
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
08:39 AM
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Comments (0)
January 19, 2006
real wage sump
its now a three-pete
and
i can hear howard C's
amazed call
"down goes wages ... down goes wages"
======================================
"Last year was the third consecutive year
in which weekly wages fell,
after adjusting for price changes,
according to department statistics
on the 92 million private production
and non-managerial service workers
who make up more than 80 percent
of the nation's workforce"
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
02:12 PM
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Comments (0)
January 14, 2006
somethin to smoke on....maybe
heres a cabnoodian thought piece
what think u ???
================================
1) You cannot 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. In bad
times, and especially when the competition does not
carry the same costs, these benefits come under attack.
Defending them in bargaining has its limits both
because the companies are in trouble and because
winning benefits which other workers do not have
leaves
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 extends this crucial
benefit to everyone, not taking it away from those who
happened to have some protection. The UAW eventually
made this point, but only after they had made the
concessions on cutting health care 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 the larger struggle (and for taking a
step toward reviving the potential social leadership
role of unions more generally). 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? 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
favors 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.
------- can u fuckin argue with that ???
i won't -----------
2) The problem from globalization is not "out there."
It is in North America.
The main problem that the GM and Delphi workers face is
not 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 makers are winning a larger share of the market.
Here too Toyota and Honda will not 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 will not happen. In the 1930s, for
example, mineworkers sent 100 organizers to organize
steel workers so that 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 ten 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 from the US to Canada or vice
versa because the union will be there to organize. Why
would the UAW not put $200 million of its ever
increasing and unused $900 million strike fund to such
use, if only to defend its own members?
---------- well here he needs a nite with lady eve about exchange rates
but he ain't wrong so far as he goes
which is step one only
we can't leave most of an industry unorganized ...for long-------
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 which will increase as
unions escalate their 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 others in the community to
fight the unilateral power of corporations, and of
international solidarity to avoid the ratcheting down
of all global labor 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 control over investment
flows would necessarily be extended to include Mexico
and Mexican workers. This could not 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 trade.
------ here's where the lady E
could show him the way
to the hideous rig job
known as the north south tilt:
(not that trans nat
capital mobility isn't the very name of the game )
but a wholesale realignment of profit rates by revaluation of south currencies ---------
=======================================================
this was by
--Sam Gindin
who " teaches at York University
and is retired
from the CAW"
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
08:00 PM
|
Comments (0)
does this really help anyone ?????
read this and tell me u got an insight ...
================================================
Three years ago in Boston, downtown streets and office
buildings were the scene of inspiring immigrant worker
activism during an unprecedented strike by local
janitors. Their walk-out was backed by other union
members, community activists, students and professors,
public officials, religious leaders, and even a few
"socially-minded" businessmen. The janitors had long
been invisible, mistreated by management and, until
recently, ignored by their own SEIU local union. Simply
by making their strike such a popular social cause,
they achieved what many regarded as a major victory.
On the same day that the janitors' dispute was settled,
a much larger strike -- at Overnite Transportation --
ended quite differently in 2002. Faced with mounting
legal setbacks and dwindling picket line support, the
Teamsters were forced to call off their nationwide
walk-out against America's leading non-union trucker.
The four thousand Overnite workers involved were not
able to win a first contract. And, since their three-
year strike was suspended, all have lost their
bargaining rights in a series of "decertification"
elections.
The contrast between these two struggles -- one hopeful
and high-profile, the other tragic and now-almost-
forgotten -- raises important questions about the state
of the strike and the future of labor in America.
Maintaining "strike capacity" is no less important than
shifting greater resources into organizing new members
-- and just as essential to union revitalization and
growth. Unfortunately, developing new ways to walk out
and win has not been a big part of recent debates about
"changing to win."
Labor's strike effectiveness and organizational
strength have long been connected. Throughout history,
work stoppages have been used for economic and
political purposes, to alter the balance of power
between labor and capital within single workplaces,
entire industries, or nationwide. Strikes have won
shorter hours and safer conditions, through legislation
or contract negotiation. They've fostered new forms of
worker organization -- like industrial unions -- that
were badly needed because of corporate restructuring
and the reorganization of production. Strikes have
acted as incubators for class consciousness, rank-and-
file leadership development, and political activism. In
other countries, strikers have challenged -- and
changed -- governments that were dictatorial and
oppressive (plus union leadership no longer accountable
to the membership).
In some nations -- like Korea, South Africa, France,
and Spain -- where strike action helped democratize
society, general strikes are still being used for mass
mobilization and protest. In recent years, millions of
Europeans have participated in nationwide work
stoppages over public-sector budget cuts, labor law
revisions, or pension plan changes sought by
conservative governments. In Brazil, voters have even
chosen a one-time strike leader, Luis Inacio ("Lula")
da Silva, to serve as president of their country.
In America, meanwhile, "major" work stoppages have
become a statistical blip on the radar screen of
industrial relations. As the recent experience of
transit workers in New York City and mechanics at
Northwest Airlines has shown, striking continues to be
a high-stakes venture as well. It involves considerable
legal and financial risks, particularly in the public
sector, where walk-outs are severely restricted and, as
in New York, subject to draconian penalties. Since
1992, walk-outs by 1,000 workers or more have averaged
less than 40 annually. In 2003, there were only 14,
with just 129,000 union members participating. In
contrast, at the peak of labor's post-World War II
strike wave in 1952, there were 470 major strikes,
affecting nearly three million workers nationwide.
Robert M. Schwartz Robert M. Schwartz
As strike activity continues to decline in the U.S.,
the pool of union members and leaders with actual
strike experience shrinks as well. That's why union
activists need to analyze, collectively and
individually, their strike victories and defeats --
summing up and sharing the lessons of these battles so
they can become the basis for future success, rather
than a reoccurring pattern of failure. Attorney Bob
Schwartz's new book, Strikes, Picketing, and Inside
Campaigns: A Legal Guide for Unions, makes a valuable
contribution to this educational process. It's the
latest in a series of easy-to-read guides from Work
Rights Press, which also publishes the author's best-
seller, The Legal Rights of Union Stewards. As in his
previous books, Schwartz provides useful sample
letters, legal notices, and answers to commonly-asked
questions -- in this case, about the many different
types of union picketing and strike activity. There
are also relevant case citations, tracking the
development of labor law in this area over the past 25
years.
Beginning with the PATCO disaster in 1981, when
thousands of striking air traffic controllers were
fired and replaced, the U.S. labor movement entered a
dark decade of lost strikes and lock-outs. Many anti-
concession battles ended badly -- at Phelps-Dodge,
Greyhound, Hormel, Eastern, Continental Airlines,
International Paper, and other firms. The lost-strike
trend discouraged many unions from using labor's
traditional weapon. Among those that did, set-backs
continued into the mid-90s, at firms like Caterpillar,
Bridgestone/Firestone, and A. E. Staley, whose Decatur,
Illinois plants became part of single strike-bound "war
zone" in 1994.
Even during this difficult period for strikers, there
were contract campaigns that bucked the tide of
concession bargaining -- and Schwartz's book discusses
some of the tactics and strategies they used. In 1989,
for example, sixty thousand members of the
Communications Workers of America and International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers waged an effective 4-
month strike in New York and New England over
threatened medical benefit cuts at NYNEX. Telephone
workers made extensive use of the mobile picketing
tactics and targeted top officials of the company and
their allies in places where they least expected it.
(See Chapter 8 of Strikes, Picketing and Inside
Campaigns, entitled "Follow That Truck," and Chapter 6,
"Making It Personal.")
At the same time, the United Mine Workers succeeded in
making their 12-month walk-out against Pittston -- in
geographically isolated Appalachian mountain
communities -- into a national labor cause. The union
mobilized its members for sympathy strikes at other
companies, linked arms with Jesse Jackson, used civil
disobedience tactics, staged the first plant occupation
since the 1930s, and created an encampment in southwest
Virginia (Camp Solidarity) that hosted strike
supporters from around the country. Even an avalanche
of injunctions, fines, and damage suits did not deter
the miners and their families.
West Virginia aluminum workers, locked out by
Ravenswood, then applied many of the lessons of the
Pittston strike in a wide-ranging corporate campaign
orchestrated by the United Steel Workers of America.
The USWA leveraged international union connections to
put mounting pressure on key financial institutions and
investors who were tied to the employer. (See Chapter
5 of Schwartz on finding the pressure points of
"integrated businesses," including their "foreign
connections.") Despite massive hiring of replacement
workers and other union-busting measures, Ravenswood
was finally forced to end its lock-out and settle with
the USWA. Since that victory, the ILWU and Bay Area
hotel workers have both turned the table on offensive
lock-outs by employer associations trying to thwart
shop floor action or a selective strike. (Consumer-
oriented picketing -- and boycotts like the one HERE
Local 2 has pursued since its 51-day lock-out in San
Francisco -- are discussed in several chapters,
including one entitled, "Buyer Beware.")
In 1997, the contract strike made its biggest comeback
in recent years with the now-famous walk-out by 190,000
United Parcel Service workers. The backing of Teamster
drivers has long been appreciated by other strikers. As
Schwartz notes (in Chapter 9, "Honor Thy Line"), IBT
contract language has been a boon to other unions who
count on Teamster drivers to respect their picket
lines. In 1997, it was time for the rest of labor to
return the favor, which unions did in a tremendous
outpouring of support for UPS drivers and package
handlers.
How the Teamsters framed their dispute with UPS was a
critical factor in gaining broader public sympathy. The
main strike objective was creating more full-time job
opportunities -- to thwart management's strategy of
converting the UPS workforce into a largely part-time
one. "Part-Time America Doesn't Work!" the Teamsters
proclaimed, in a successful effort to invest their
contract fight with larger social meaning. The UPS
strike not only beat back the company's concession
demands and made job security gains. It became a
rallying point for everyone concerned about the
societal impact of part-timing, with its accompanying
erosion of job-based benefits.
Unions engaged in more recent struggles against health
care cost-shifting have tried to borrow from the
Teamsters' playbook at UPS -- by linking their strikes
to the movement for health care reform. When 18,000
General Electric workers staged a 2-day nationwide
walk-out in 2003, to protest medical plan changes, many
locals organized around the slogan, "Health Care for
All, Not Health Cuts at GE!" Strike-related rallies
and publicity emphasized the common bond between union
and non-union, insured and uninsured workers. (The
UFCW's 2003-2004 strike and lock-out, involving
thousands of grocery workers in southern California,
was less successful in making the connection between
management demands for benefit cuts and the need for
universal medical coverage.)
As Schwartz notes, some unions are now striking with
greater tactical flexibility than before, experimenting
with limited-duration walkouts and inside campaigns to
reduce the risk and cost of protracted shut-downs. HERE
members at Yale University have repeatedly demonstrated
creativity -- and unusual solidarity between separate
white-collar and blue-collar units -- during their
campus-based bargaining battles. In 2003, Yale workers
skirmished effectively with the university for the
ninth time in the last thirty-five years. Faced with
aggressive picketing, mass rallies, and strike-related
arrests, Yale sued for peace in the form of a long-term
contract settlement.
In similar fashion, thousands of telephone workers in
the northeast entered regional bargaining with Verizon
in 2003 with a record of five strikes in the previous
two decades -- and a deeply-ingrained "no contract, no
work" tradition. Confronted with unprecedented strike
contingency planning by management, members of CWA and
IBEW shifted gears, to throw their corporate adversary
off balance. For more than a month, they worked
without a contract (engaging in all the "job wobbling"
activities described by Schwartz in Chapter 2, "No
Contract -- No Peace."). Verizon incurred enormous
strike-preparation costs, without getting the
opportunity to replace its existing workforce with an
army of scabs, as planned. The result was a new
contract that preserved job security guarantees, plus
fully-paid medical coverage for workers and retirees.
(In 2004, a four-day national "warning strike" by
100,000 workers at SBC Communications -- some of whom
had not been on strike in twenty years -- produced
similar results, while avoiding the risk of an open-
ended walk-out.)
"Job wobbling" -- in the form of work-to-rule and other
"inside tactics" -- has also figured prominently in
recent rank-and-file discussions about how to respond
to the deep wage and benefits cuts demanded by Delphi
Corp., the nation's largest auto parts supplier. Both
UAW leaders and some dissidents seem to have endorsed
the work slow-down approach -- in a situation where
walking out might actually facilitate the company's
downsizing and plant-shutdown plans.
Regardless of what form worker militancy takes, it
helps to have adequate financial backing for strikes
and contract campaigns. One bottom-line requirement is
a big national strike fund, with the flexibility to pay
out fixed weekly benefits (of at least $200 to $300 per
week) -- either for strikers or for the disciplinary
casualties of concerted in-plant activity. Some unions
like CWA (which has a $360 million "Member Relief
Fund") also maintain a separate source of contract
campaign funding -- for use by workers who are
prohibited by law from striking and for the payment of
strikers' medical expenses and/or COBRA premiums. (See
Chapter 10 of Schwartz, entitled "Benefit Daze," for
much valuable advice about COBRA coverage, unemployment
claims, and related issues.)
Creativity, careful planning, and membership
involvement are essential to success -- whether a union
chooses to stop work or pursue a non-strike strategy. A
big part of the internal planning process is sizing up
the strengths and weaknesses of management's position
-- and your own. Before (rather than after) walking
out, union members need to line up labor and community
support through solidarity coalitions like Jobs with
Justice or local central labor councils. Otherwise,
there is great danger that a small group of workers --
and sometimes even a large one -- will end up on picket
lines isolated, frustrated, and impoverished.
Bob Schwartz's new book is a unique tool to use in
membership education, leadership training, and union
strategy discussions about what to do when a contract
expires. In situations where striking is a necessary
and viable worker response, Schwartz's book outlines
what it takes to make a walk-out effective, while
helping unions anticipate likely employer counter-
measures at the bargaining table, in court, and at the
NLRB. The author has pulled together an enormous
amount of material that has not been readily accessible
to non-lawyers in the past -- even to activists relying
on the official strike manuals of the few unions that
have them. Union members who fail to consult
Schwartz's book while preparing for a contract fight
will not be as ready as they could be to deal with the
many legal and organizational problems that may arise.
Any union bargaining team that doesn't have a copy of
Strikes, Picketing and Inside Campaigns is missing out
on information and advice that will make the hard job
of winning good contracts just a little bit easier
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
04:02 PM
|
Comments (0)
where's the mine closing movement ????
why can't miners strike for safety ?????
what am i missing here ????
this isn't 1923
where's the fucking UMW ?????
shut those fuckin none union death sumps down
=================================================
=================================================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
03:36 PM
|
Comments (0)
transit action
we can't sum it up yet
not too soon to tell
maybe our fog
is no more or less
then
symptomatic of the movement's
present stage ...
right now it all looks up and brighter from here
but how high
and how soon.....
shit if we know
================================================
snatches
of
gale's report:
" herb ..dmaned if i know what comes out of this "
"not that i'd have handled stuff
the same way
but me have a better way ?????
honestly can't say
my differences are not about missed style points
of course not
but can i fairly ask
"are they ...fuck are we
even kicking the right ball around "
----------------------------------------------------------
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
03:28 PM
|
Comments (0)
chavez series
read the multi part story
of the ufw and its leader
in the la times
what a way to fall....
=====================================================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
03:24 PM
|
Comments (0)
January 07, 2006
ICG and willlllllbeeeerrr
yup the scum also rises
sago's latest owner is 666 incorporated
lets make him a loser this time big time
==============================
reuters:
" ICG's
chairman is
financier Wilbur Ross "
"a specialist in buying out
companies in distressed industries"
aahhh our old pal wilbur sure is
and once he's turned em inside out
he flips em pretty good too ...
'ICG only acquired . The Sago mine last year"
"Sago was previously owned
by
Anker Coal Group Inc.,
one of two coal producers ICG
acquired in 2005"
"Anker was in bankruptcy,
so it was operating under
marginal financial conditions"
"The big picture for investors
is what will it do for
production,"
"What will it mean for
supply and demand and pricing?"
"Coal prices are at all-
time highs,
driven in part by surging
global steel
and
other industrial demand"
"ICG is sufficiently well capitalized
and has Street
money behind them
this will have no material
effect,"
" the Sago mine
represents
only about 2 percent
to 3 percent of ICG's
total production"
Consol Energy and Arch Coal both shut
major mines in recent years with little long-term
financial impact, he said.
"These kind of events
do occur
but the Street's negative
view of such events
lasted only a couple of days."
" the explosion will have
little effect on recruitment
the industry is already
well known t
o
be dangerous"
. "These are still
the highest paying jobs
around
in places like West Virginia"
" despite a chronic shortage
of
skilled miners
especially in Central Appalachia"
"ICG stock fell 3 percent
on the New York
Stock Exchange"
lets see if we can make that
a drop more like 97%
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
07:01 PM
|
Comments (0)
January 06, 2006
shut those fuckin ICG shafts down
time to kill
the killer boss Rosses death traps
no matter how hot the profits
he's makin
no lets go farther
if wilbur r owns her
we're shut her down
now now now
that goes for all these old shaft sluts
he owns
we're shuttin em
all of em
fuck
they all need shuttin'
for violations
if we can't picket em shut
we'll
blow em shut
and
keep em shut
till uncle
treats all Rosses' miners
like lotttery winners
not expendable shaft fodder
shut em all
till
each Ross miner gets
an uncle sam backed
ICG extracted
life time pension
activated as of last month
and that goes
for everyone
============================
the squalid foot print
that fore told
death
"the Sago Mine
had more than 270 safety violations
over the past two years"
and no union
" In the past year alone
the mine was cited nine times
for failing to enact
a proper mine ventilation plan"
and no union
"Despite a record of violations and injuries
much higher than the average
for coal mines of similar size
the mine’s owner paid just $24,000 in fines
in the past two years
with most of the serious violations
carrying a penalty of just $247 each"
and no union
shut all the shaft mines down
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
08:17 PM
|
Comments (0)
remember Sago
like new orleans
last September
Sago too
means
there can be no rest
till our struggle is won
just
look at uz
any old time
the fucker
has a mind to
death by profit
can rise up
and snatch away the living
right before our eyes
=============================
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
08:04 PM
|
Comments (0)
January 03, 2006
kool credo
by Aldon Morris and Dan Clawson
submitted to portside
1/2/06
What kind of labor writing gets suppressed in the U.S.
today? Apparently it doesn't take much.
We wrote an article on "Lessons of the Civil Rights
Movement for Building a Worker Rights Movement" whose
last paragraph said:
Finally,
a fundamental question faces workers today:
do
they have the courage
to get up off their knees
and
confront powerful employers
and corporations?
A
movement requires moral authority
and enormous
sacrifices by its participants
if it is to succeed.
In
mass movements
people must be willing to go to jail
be beaten
and even lose their lives
in a noble
and
just collective effort
designed to win
their rights
and
restore their dignity
Although we do not know
whether
contemporary workers
possess such courage
we do know
that Jim Crow
was overthrown
because southern Blacks
did
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
07:50 AM
|
Comments (0)
January 01, 2006
jerk to rule
uaw up date:
the very definition of yellow unionism.....
or who's really working to rule here ??
the rankers or their leaders ????
" SHHHHHH
quiet..
keep this strictly confidential...
the fuckin top toppers
over at
the butterfinger brigade
are clearly
ready and willing
to lay square eggs
for delphi and its gm daddy
square eggs of the goose kind "
==================================
todays 'struggle line '
at delphi ????
"WORKING TO RULE"
here's a recent lovely
lady
pink belly reporter's
take on this
posted up at labor notes
"The work to rule campaign
is already under way"
'already '????
jesus like this is show down tactics
already slowin down
what the fiuck we got here a half century ??
is this ghandi vs the raj ??
king in alabama ??
fuck this all will be a wrap by easter you geeks
" In Flint, one Delphi worker reported
“most in our department
and the department that supplies us are doing it.”
"most" "doing it "
like its a dance craze
' come on baby
dooooo
the sloco motion with me ...'
" Another worker said
skilled trades and production workers
are working to rule together"
"together " ???
jesus christ
thats like shuffling your feet under the desk together
solidarity right on boyz right on
but this is somewhere between group gestures
and a fart riot
beat off contests with the lights on
are more daring
good idea to do stuff
in public
so u can count heads
get lines of communication wired up and tested out
that way
no sick practical jokes
come judgement day
work to rule and the like
are
costless
ranker co ordination exercises
but but but but butrick gang
this is like training for war with brooms
and we could already here
the enemy guns booming
way back last rock-tober
and how'z this for a nut cracker...
"Resisting overtime has been harder
to organize ....
workers fear
future job and pay cuts "
totally bull shit
gotta brake that shit off
like a bunch of dead branches
right nooooow
seperate the yellow legs up front
on this issue where
"my own pay gets in the way "
thats right where u cull
the ghouls among ya
so do it right nooooow
"One Delphi worker said
he’d been unsuccessful
in encouraging his co-workers
to refuse overtime just for a week"
"just for a week " ???
then get crackin fuzzy
cause you iz so far from home plate baby
come batter up
u may
find yourself
in the bleechers crushin beer cans
-------------------------------
here's my idea of pie card shuffle-up-a-gus
" the uaw leadership
gave a new deadline to Delphi
agree by x
or we'll plan a fight-back"
drawing bright lines is where its at
but
"plan " a fight back
"plan" !!!!!!!
and this is no rope a dope
so far the pies have done nothing
beyond release gas
to shape the ranks up
for a scrap
fuck this means
u rankers
are getting set up
set up
for a classic
eleventh hour
lay down and roll job
sorrell rules
'any fuckin dead line
has to be a job action deadline'
fuck this
deadline to " plan " shit
this smoke and mirrors farce
"do it right
or else
we'll deal with ya latter..."
what an act
that kind of muscle posturing
should be yesterdays news
no the yesterday before last sundays news
by now .......
the leaders should be growing
ten inch horns on their foreheads
this isn't due deliberate speed brothers and sisters
this is naked big toe deepest in the mud
treasonous foot dragging
shit boys and girls
your leaders are
using a 'work to rule' slow mo
too
but its against you
yourselves and yours
reason..
the pies are hoping to keep u
waitin and weak
last thing they want is a ranker uprising....
against them
listen cause there's
a hopeful element inside this
the pie heads
will
avoid a top down
public ranker power strip
even more then a strike call
yes they fear u
so
this stall job by the pies
is to keep u rankers un organized
passive and pliable
unable to act at the moment
of ultimate sell out
unable to act till
'sweet reason '
can say to u
"its too late folks "
-------------------------------
pie code of sportsman ship :
play nice play clean
play to lose ....
play
politely
humbly and
lose
batheically
to me
these uncle walt outfits
are an easy read
their leadership
sells out
not
just to keep
their fattly upholstered status quo
yes
they've grown to know and love it
but hey
sellout enough and the laze boy
is gone someday too
no its also done
cause these trimmer godlier uncle walt types
hanker after
the good regard of your betters
often truth be told
its the nyt readership
they're
show boating for
as in this
clintonesque clownery
"the UAW International
has been organizing
town hall meetings
and informational pickets "
and one can imagine at each informal picket
tea is served to one and all
and the name of thomas jefferson is toasted
needless to add
"there’s been little communication
between the leadership
and rank and filers
who have been organizing ...
their own meetings"
ahhh now we strike sparks
self organizing rankers ???
this has to be ignored like
the cry
" the fuckers are
wearing no cloths "
but as to these
ranker RALLIES themselves ....
"Lockport Local 686
held a rally November 30
that brought hundreds out
as did Kokomo, Indiana’s Local 292
on December 10. "
"In central Indiana,
an estimated 1,000
workers and community members
attended a rally
in support of Delphi workers."
rally headline :
“Delphi cooks the books, workers get burned.”
ugh i read stuff like that
and my gut starts
sinking on me
like a cannon ball
in the ocean
god love ya guys
but is that all you got ???
i mean respectfully
at this point ??????
this close to hammer time ????
-----------------
shit when it comes
and it will come
uncle walt's
apple anny days are gone
long gone
this isn't the hat dance
delphi's fiends
are playing here
this is take no prisoners
there will be
no splittin the difference
not over this table here
and when the last straw
is drawn
and it proves to be
not even short
but pure shit ..
what will the ranker fight back
be ????
in this light
i ask u
why are
the pies trifling for here ????
like there will be no hideous finale
like it will all just keep
simmering down
simmer on simmer
till a fade out to flat cold nothing
there's going to be an explosion along the way here
you ninnies
----------------------------------------
the pattern is clear
comrades
unless the ranks get proper organization here
they are headed toward
one of those age old slaughter scenes
it'll be like
a re run
of the fuckin childrens' crusade
not with a field strewn with innocent blood and bowels
but with thousands
of broken
degraded miserable souls
its a clasic tale ...
the righteous and innocent
pushed to a final act of resistence
ending in massacre
-----------------
ahh gettin too heavy ...
more on the big toe dragster technique
"In the two months
since Delphi’s bankruptcy announcement
the UAW has oscillated
between bleak predictions
and tough fighting words"
now what else does that spell but tranquilizer
doses that get higher and higher
till the brains trust
cries out
"it ain't working"
and they start
the old blanket toss
early on gloom tranque
by
UAW Vice-President
and delphi grappler
Richard Shoemaker :
“The best
we will probably be able to do
... buy time for retirement
and save some plants.”
Later when rankers
seem to be humbling
" fuck taking it..."
and begin to stur
shoemaker has diffy tune :
" a strike is likely
if Delphi doesn't
spice up its ridiculous offer "
but still the no move no action
and the false and vile hopes
management and the pies
let ride
"Delphi still acts like it wants
a life-saving deal with GM
GM recently volunteered to forego
the planned 2006 price cuts
it had previously demanded for Delphi parts"
and then there's the pies own wolf tickets:
claiming
despite its own billion dollar
cave in on health
at ' big auto 'just last year
there's supposed to be "assurances "
' nope don't worry kids ...
it can't happen here......
well not completely anyway ...'
why?
cause
" GM is still responsible
for Delphi workers’ pensions"
" although no one as yet has produced
a written guarantee to that effect"
all this just keeps rowing along
despite the fumes rising
off the shit pile
still called solidarity house
despite a stench of sell out
no rhetorical spray deodorant
no matter how massive can hide
still
pie familiars continue their ploys
" hopeful Rumors abound ..."
" GM will help Delphi
even if just
to pacify the UAW"
"there will be offers
of buyouts
for all Delphi workers"
can anyone
imagine this board room scene
"we gotta
we gotta
we just gotta...pacify the uaw "
that toothless bow legged old sow ???
recall two years ago :
" the UAW signed an agreement
allowing Delphi
to cut new-hires’ wages 40% "
and all along
while spreadin em
for that unprecedented
rip dip and ship
the fuckers were bleeting
"what can we good guyz do...
the auto parts sector
is 80 percent
non-union these days "
-------------------
side bar :
i really liked
this one line in the article
" All observers believe
the International would not hesitate
to accept wage cuts
from the current $26
to $16-$17
having bravely fended off
management’s opening demand for $9"
after much dry blah blah
this sudden drop of sarcasm
applied directly
to the center of the wound ..
good show lass good show
-----------------------------
sum up:
yes the ghost of reuther's
latest spawn
are all
ready to roll over
but as our reporter
closes
" will the ranks follow suit?"
holy cow gal ain't that the question
ready or not
will the kids stand tall
i'll be damned
if the answer to that ain't clear
as heaven's back door ....
i say to u all
here and now
at the end
---- and u can
take this to the bank friends --------
with nothing left to lose
with their toilers backs
to the exit gate wall
the hands will rise
the klaas will come out
to scrap
the wagery fighters will make a stand
what else is left??
this isn't 1980 anymore
this is alamo time
right here in river city
saints preserve us
but
i'll let you all
fuck me in the ear
if i'm cockeyed on this one
and my ears have very tiny opennings
this time
this time
this time
and
at long fucking last
there will be
no going quietly
into that dark nite
Posted by herb jr. jr. at
10:44 AM
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