Community, Environment, trade unions

Fighting for Our Future & Honoring Martin Luther King With Solidarity

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April 4 ‘We Are One’ Events:

Uniting Labor and Community

For an Upsurge in Class War

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Working-class solidarity actions involving thousands of workers were among the lead news items in the headlines in nearly 1200 cities and town around the country over the April 4 weekend. The Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Eastern Ohio ‘rust belt’ region was no exception.

The occasion commemorated the anniversary of the April 4, 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during his effort to help striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee win union recognition. The entire U.S. labor movement seized the time to organize public protest against the outrageous rightwing attacks on worker rights in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio. The AFL-CIO knows full well that more attacks are coming, and its ‘We Are One’ campaign for the day was a grassroots dress rehearsal and consciousness-raising effort to prepare both its troops and its community-based allies for more battles to come.

“We are one! We are one!’ and ‘What’s Disgusting? Union busting!’ were among the chants echoing off the concrete and glass walls of downtown Pittsburgh. Somewhere between 500 and 1000 marchers waved V-signs at passersby in cars and buses–but more often than in a long time, one saw a sea of the more militant clenched fist salutes as well. As usual, different contingents of workers wore their color coded T-Shirts for the day-camouflage for the UMWA, dark blue for the Steelworkers, red for Unite Here! hotel workers, and purple for SEIU service workers.

USW President Leo Gerard fired people up at the first stop, the Equitable Gas headquarters. “These rich bastards aren’t paying any taxes and sending the bills to us and giving themselves record-breaking bonuses. If tax cuts created jobs, Bush would have left office with full employment. The speculators gamble with our money and want us to cover their losses. Well, when they come around again, they can kiss my ass.”

The crowd loved it. “What do you think, why are you here?” I asked Pamela Maclin, a woman worker standing near Leo, “We fought and died for our union rights, our civil rights.  We’re taking a stand; they’re not going to take them away.”

Continue reading Fighting for Our Future & Honoring Martin Luther King With Solidarity →

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USW Pres. Gerard Message to “We Are One” Rallies

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Greedy Corporations and the Wealthy Fatten Themselves on the Rest of Us — Join “We Are One” Rallies to Stop the Freeloaders

By Leo Gerard, AlterNet
Posted on April 3, 2011, Printed on April 4, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150481/

 

The nation’s greedy corporations and insatiable wealthy are fattening themselves on workers. There’s no trickle down. It’s the opposite; the rich have been sucking the economic lifeblood from the middle class for decades.

When reckless Wall Street banksters get taxpayer-funded bailouts, billionaires get tax breaks and gigantic corporations like GE and Bank of America pay absolutely no federal income taxes, they’re getting for free the very public services that enable them to make massive profits in this country – the courts, the roads, the trade regulators, the patent enforcement.

The middle class doesn’t get those big time special deals and loopholes. Workers pay their taxes. As a result, it’s workers footing the bill for the government services that enrich the rich. Greedy corporations, their CEOs and the right-wing politicians they buy with tens of millions in campaign cash are freeloaders.

It’s time workers stood up to the freeloaders. Join Monday’s We Are One rallies. These demonstrations across the country by religious groups, social justice organizations and labor unions will illustrate that the middle class is mad as hell and not going to take trickster economics anymore.

It’s time for greedy corporations and the insatiable rich to pay their fair share. It’s time to stop cuts to the government programs most treasured by and vital to the middle class and the vulnerable in this country – education, public transportation, Social Security. It’s time to stop right-wing attempts to terminate democratic rights like collective bargaining and voting without harassment. It’s time for the middle class to stop paying for everything and for the insatiable rich and greedy corporations to start sharing the sacrifice required to recover from the economic crisis caused by reckless gambling by Wall Street bankster corporations.

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The CIA, the Libyan Rebellion, and the President

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The CIA, the Libyan Rebellion, and the President

Posted: 03/31/11 01:57 PM ET
Huffington Post
David Bromwich

David Bromwich

Professor of Literature at Yale

One of Barack Obama’s first acts as president was to say that Guantanamo must go. It did not go. Soon after, he said that the Israeli settlements must go. They expanded. Obama made his peace in the end with Guantanamo and the Israeli settlements. He restarted the military tribunals at Guantanamo — a feature of the Bush-Cheney constitution which he once had explicitly deplored — and recently went out of his way to defend the Guantanamo-like abuse (compulsory nakedness and sleep deprivation) inflicted on an American prisoner, Bradley Manning, in the Marine Corps brig at Quantico. One had come to think of “X must go” assertions by Obama as speculative prefaces to a non-existent work. His words, in his mind, are actions. When he speaks them once or twice, he has done what he was put here to do. If the existing powers defy his wishes, he embraces the powers and continues on his way.

The Egyptian protest of January and February saw a new siege of wishful commandments and reversals by the president. He told Mubarak to go. Then he told him to stay a while. Mubarak said he would stay, but after a time, he went; and in the mind of Obama, it appears, there was a relation of cause and effect between his initial request and the final result. He was consequently emboldened.

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Federal Judge Rules States Cannot Interfere with Collective Bargaining Rights

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Chicago's McCormick Place

Judge re: McPier – No Interference in Collective Bargaining

  • By Michael Barnes, Chicago Conservative Examiner
  • April 1st, 2011 2:42 pm CT

In a ruling that has far-reaching implications for Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Maine, Indiana, Iowa, and Missouri, a federal judge threw out labor law reforms at Chicago’s McCormick Place that the Illinois state legislature enacted in 2010 following supplication from the convention industry.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman affirms that collective bargaining rights cannot be overturned by governmental edict. Guzman told the Legislature “it had no business trying to interfere with collective bargaining” according to Marvin Gittler, an attorney representing Local 727 of the Teamsters.

Guzman held that the National Labor Relations Act preempts the Legislature from dictating terms for unions working at McCormick Place. This ruling is similar to the finding of The International Commission for Labor Rights, which has said, in part: The ICLR identified the right of “freedom of association” as a fundamental right and affirmed that the right to collective bargaining is an essential element of freedom of association. These rights, which have been recognized worldwide, provide a brake on unchecked corporate or state power.

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UMWA Holds Rally for Workers Rights in Waynesburg

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Mine workers rally for public employees

Friday, April 01, 2011
The Associated Press

WAYNESBURG, Pa. — Nearly 3,000 union mine workers are rallying on behalf of public employees in other states.

The United Mine Workers of America says around 3,000 members, their families and other supporters from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia at the We Are One Solidarity March and Rally in Waynesburg today.

Marchers plan to walk along state Route 21 and rally at the Greene County Fairgrounds.

It’s the first major labor rally outside the states, including Wisconsin and Ohio, where lawmakers are battling over collective bargaining rights. UMW President Cecil Roberts says it won’t be the last.

But miners have other goals in mind. The UMW is set to begin negotiations on a new nationwide coal contract to replace the one expiring Dec. 31.

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11091/1136268-455.stm#ixzz1IIWc3xC9

elections

PA Gov. Corbett Puts Wall St. Profits ahead of State Budget

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PA Protest

Tax on gas drillers boils in Harrisburg

Governor resolute in his opposition

Monday, March 28, 2011
By Joseph Tanfani and Angela Couloumbis, Philadelphia Inquirer

As new taxes go, a levy on natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania would seem like a pretty easy political sell.

Two-thirds of the state’s voters support the idea, several polls show.

Politicians are desperate for money to plug a $4 billion budget gap and prevent deep cuts in the state college system and other programs.

Every other major natural-gas producing state has some sort of tax, and some of the biggest drillers have said they won’t oppose one here, so long as it’s reasonable.

“The Marcellus industry has been clear and outspoken on this for a year or so,” said Ray Walker, vice president of Texas-based Range Resources and chairman of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group. “We are willing to discuss a severance tax.”

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Democrats, Economy, safety net, social security

‘Third Way’ Dems and the Road to Perdition

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Why Any Deal to Cut Social Security,

Medicare or Medicaid Would be

a Moral, Economic and Political Disaster

By Robert Creamer
Huffington Post, March 28, 2011

Friday, the Democratic group Third Way published a memo arguing that Democrats should support "entitlement reform" — by which they mean cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. I don’t doubt the sincerity or intentions of their proposal, but I believe that if Democrats took their advice it would result in a moral, economic and political disaster.

Here’s why:

The immorality of "entitlement reform." The very idea that seniors on Social Security — whose average income is $18,000 a year — should be asked to tighten their belts while the Federal Government still gives huge tax breaks to millionaires and subsidies to oil companies is just plain wrong.

The principle voices for "entitlement reform" are the multi-millionaires from Wall Street who argue that we need to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits as part of a bargain to reduce the long-term federal deficit and give the "markets" confidence. Never mind that Social Security in particular does not contribute anything to the deficit and has in fact generated a $2.6 trillion surplus that was paid for by workers and employers through Social Security taxes. Never mind that the Wall Street gang clamoring for "entitlement reform" demanded extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, subsidies for the oil companies, tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas and an end to the estate tax that only affects the sons and daughters of multi-millionaires.

Continue reading ‘Third Way’ Dems and the Road to Perdition →