Category Archives: Economy

Economy, labor

We Know This Story: Cleveland Clothing Workers Getting the Shaft

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What the Labor Battle

at Hugo Boss Means for

Our Economic Future

By Robert Creamer
The Huffington Post

Feb. 8, 2010 – It’s the red carpet season in Hollywood. That means high-end apparel companies like Hugo Boss are promoting iconic celebrities to wear their clothing line at the Oscars and other award ceremonies.

But for the workers who make these suits in Cleveland, Ohio, it’s a season of a different shade — that of the pink slip. And the result is an iconic labor battle that is emblematic of many of the most important issues facing our economy.

Just after Christmas, Germany-based Hugo Boss messengered pink slips to the 400 employees at its Cleveland, Ohio manufacturing facility. The employees were told that they were being laid off and the plant was being closed.

Hugo Boss was not closing the facility because it was losing money — or, for that matter, because the company was in bad financial condition. Quite the contrary. Continue reading We Know This Story: Cleveland Clothing Workers Getting the Shaft →

Economy, labor

Steelworkers Seek Job Creation via Worker-Owned Factories

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Photo: High-tech Machine Tools from MCC

‘One Worker, One Vote:’
US Steelworkers to Experiment
with Factory Ownership,
Mondragon Style

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Oct. 27, 2009–The United Steel Workers Union, North America’s largest industrial trade union, announced a new collaboration with the world’s largest worker-owned cooperative, Mondragon International, based in the Basque region of Spain.

News of the announcement spread rapidly throughout the communities of global justice activists, trade union militants, economic democracy and socialist organizers, green entrepreneurs and cooperative practitioners of all sorts. More than a few raised an eyebrow, but the overwhelming response was, “Terrific! How can we help?”

The vision behind the agreement is job creation, but with a new twist. Since government efforts were being stifled by the greed of financial speculators and private capital was more interested in cheap labor abroad, unions will take matters into their own hands, find willing partners, and create jobs themselves, but in sustainable businesses owned by the workers.
Continue reading Steelworkers Seek Job Creation via Worker-Owned Factories →

Economy, labor

AFL-CIO Pres. Rich Trumka To Testify in Congress Against Phony Bank Reform Bill

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RichTrumka
AFL-CIO Pres. Rich Trumka

by Mike Elk

 

Campaign for America’s Future

Posted: October 29, 2009 03:07 AM

After leading the dramatic three day Showdown in Chicago at the American Bankers Association (ABA) Convention in Chicago, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will head to the House Financial Service Committee today to testify against proposed reform legislation that actually gives the banks more power. In a twist of irony, he literally sit down the table from American Bankers Association Ed Yingling as he testifies against the banksters.

After weakening current law on derivatives., the committee has once again weakened law in the banker’s favor. The drafted legislation concerning banks “too big to fail” which would actually lead to more bailouts over the long run.

Continue reading AFL-CIO Pres. Rich Trumka To Testify in Congress Against Phony Bank Reform Bill →

Economy, labor

USW Forms Alliance with World’s Largest Cooperative

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Mondragon1
Mondragon Co-op

For More Information:  Rob Witherell, 412-562-4333, rwitherell@usw.org

Steelworkers Form Collaboration with MONDRAGON, the World’s Largest Worker-Owned Cooperative

Pittsburgh (Oct. 27, 2009) – The United Steelworkers (USW) and MONDRAGON Internacional, S.A. today announced a framework agreement for collaboration in establishing MONDRAGON cooperatives in the manufacturing sector within the United States and Canada.  The USW and MONDRAGON will work to establish manufacturing cooperatives that adapt collective bargaining principles to the MONDRAGON worker ownership model of “one worker, one vote.”

Continue reading USW Forms Alliance with World’s Largest Cooperative →

Community, Economy, labor

Mass Protest at American Bankers Association Festivities in Chicago – Sen. Dick Durbin Addresses Union Protesters

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SEIU: “Our demand is simple: stop taking our tax dollars and squandering them away on billion dollar bonuses and massive lobbying campaigns against financial reform.”
http://www.seiu.org/2009/10/you-werent-on-the-guest-list.php

Continue reading Mass Protest at American Bankers Association Festivities in Chicago – Sen. Dick Durbin Addresses Union Protesters →

Economy

Details of the Wall Street Coup D’Etat

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“The finance industry has effectively captured our government…”

former IMF Chief Economist and current MIT Professor Simon Johnson in the May, 2009 issue of The Atlantic

By David DeGraw
AmpedStatus Report, 10/13 – 10/16

The past few days have been very revealing when it comes to the financial coup that has occurred here in the US. When we say financial coup, we’re not giving you hyperbole. We’re telling you the technical term for what has occurred.

Don’t take our word for it, investigate it for yourself. Here’s a special report we have compiled which features the most recent information available concerning the takeover:

Continue reading Details of the Wall Street Coup D’Etat →

Economy

Goldman Sachs Makes Greatest Profits in History – Strengthens Its Control of the United States of America

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Another Goldman executive named to key government post as its profits skyrocket

A Goldman executive today becomes key enforcement official, joining a long list of his colleagues in key posts.

Glenn Greenwald

Oct. 16, 2009 |

Apparently, the U.S. government didn’t have enough Goldman Sachs executives in key financial and regulatory positions, so this happened today:

A Goldman Sachs executive has been named the first chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division.

The market watchdog says Adam Storch, vice president in Goldman Sachs’ Business Intelligence Group, is assuming the new position of managing executive of the SEC division.

Continue reading Goldman Sachs Makes Greatest Profits in History – Strengthens Its Control of the United States of America →

antiwar, Economy, labor, Youth and students

Pittsburgh First-Hand G20 Reports: Day Three

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front-march

Photo: PDA’s Randy Shannon with banner, center, next Michael McPhearson of Vets for Peace with Rick Kimbrough, right.

10,000 Marchers Beat Back
The Steel City’s ‘State of Siege’


By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Nearly 10,000 protesters marched through the streets of Pittsburgh on the last day of the G20 this Sept. 25 afternoon, delivering a powerful message for global justice that was expressed with a brilliantly colored display of unity, militancy and diversity.

Peace and justice groups demanded an end to wars and occupations and healthcare for all, trade union contingents demanded green jobs and fair trade, women and people of color raised the banners of equality and empowerment, and young people called for a sustainable and liberated future in a new world.

“Will we make any difference?” Rick Kimbrough asked me a few hours earlier as we headed down a parkway heavily secured with police cars at every exit on our way into town. Kimbrough is an old high school friend, an African American steelworker with 37 years in a huge Beaver County mill that’s now shutdown and gone, Jones and Laughlin Steel. When I asked him to join me the day before, he was fired up to go already, until he heard a nephew had taken a bullet as a bystander in a senseless street fight. When he heard his nephew would do OK, he called back, ready to ride in with me and join the United Steel Workers contingent in ‘the People’s March’ at the close of the G20 sessions. Continue reading Pittsburgh First-Hand G20 Reports: Day Three →

Economy, labor

Pittsburgh G20 First-Hand Report Diaries: Day Two

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pointpark

Photo: USW Blue-Green Rally at G20 for Green Jobs, Clean Energy

Union Teach-Ins, a Nobel Laureate
Ninja Turtles and Steel City Rockers

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

One of the first things you see entering Pittsburgh from the Fort Pitt Bridge is that the United Steel Workers, headquartered in this working-class town, are determined to deliver a strong message to the G20 bigwigs.

“Jobs, Good Jobs, Greens Jobs Now!’ declared the huge five-story-tall banner draped from the top of the  even taller USW headquarters building that faces the Golden Triangle and its hotels. Despite squads of militarized police, some in their Ninja turtle outfits, no one anywhere near the downtown area can miss it.

Today I’m headed for the day-long ‘Teach-In on Human Rights, Global Justice and the G20’ organized by the USW at their 4th floor conference center. Later in the afternoon on this gray, drizzly and humid Sept 23 day, I plan to hear Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz speak in the low-income Hill District, and attend a labor-environmentalist rally and concert featuring local politicians and rockers. Continue reading Pittsburgh G20 First-Hand Report Diaries: Day Two →

Economy, Environment, labor

AFL-CIO Pres. Rich Trumka Challenges G-20 Leaders to Respect Workers and Environment

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by Seth Michaels, Sep 24, 2009
AFL-CIO Blog

Last night in Pittsburgh, at an event featuring former Vice President Al Gore and a broad coalition of environmental and union leaders, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka challenged the global heads of state attending the G-20 conference to build a new economic order that protects the dignity of workers and the planet.

The world cannot afford to continue with a globalization that works only for the very richest and leaves workers and the communities they live in behind, Trumka said. While the G-20 leaders meet, unions are issuing a declaration that calls for global action for good jobs:

Together, the labor movement and the environmental movement are a fighting force for change. This is our time—time to let the powers gathered here this week know exactly what we want, and exactly what we won’t stand for. We want a clean energy economy that creates good jobs, and we want a safe and healthy planet.

We need a new economic order that demands respect for both workers and the planet…globalization that benefits only the rich, the assault on workers and the planet and the devastation it breeds, has got to go.

Trumka noted that Pittsburgh wasn’t revitalized by the type of globalization that exports jobs—Pittsburgh’s growth came despite, not because of, the big banks and global corporations. In the real economy, Trumka said, it takes workers with good, safe jobs to build a lasting prosperity. We can’t go back to business, to the unfair economic system that caused our financial crisis, he said.

Trumka laid out a program of regulation of the finance industry, major public investment in clean energy and transportation, controls on carbon emissions and the freedom for all workers to form a union.