Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Monday, October 29, 2012

October 29 News Update

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central, we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New York Times will be followed with a *. The Times pay wall policy allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Tacoma: City employee labor union sues city
TWU USA and Australia join forces on labor issues

Missouri Labor Takes on the Poverty Business, Cements Alliances
World Bank’s Anti-Labor Index Is a Dirty Business

New Contract Good News for Chicago Airport Workers—Unless City Moots It

City Mayor Joins Growing Outcry of Support for Unjust Firing of Affinity Nurse

Walmart supply agencies accused
White House weighs new tax cut to replace payroll break

India’s Plague, Trash, Drowns Its Garden City During Strike
*
FDA Details Contamination at Pharmacy
*
Here’s a Memo From the Boss: Vote This Way
*
Trooper Fired From Chopper to Stop Truck, Kills 2
*
Rise in Household Debt Might Be Sign of a Strengthening Recovery
*
U.S. Growth Rate Picks Up to 2%
*
South African Worker Protest Turns Violent in Mining Town

YRC unit irks union workers in Cincinnati

Union Workers at University of Rochester Vote For More Action

A Part-Time Life, as Hours Shrink and Shift
*
Judge: Boeing broke labor law at SC plant

CAW: Workers go on strike at two auto supplier plants in Ontario
Five million in Britain 'below Living Wage'

Racial prejudice in US worsening
Silos Loom as Death Traps on American Farms
*

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Friday, October 26, 2012

Updates Resume on kclabor.org

We are pleased to announce that the technical problems that prevented updates to KC Labor have apparently been resolved. Fresh postings went up on the home page this morning. You may need to reload/refresh your browser to see them. Thanks to all for your patience

Bill Onasch, webmaster

October 26 News Update

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central, we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New York Times will be followed with a *. The Times pay wall policy allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Guns, climate, gays missing in presidential race
Michigan Vote a Test Case on Enshrining the Rights of Unions *

United Labor Credit Union in Kansas City wins three national awards

Will Home Care Unionism Survive?

The Formula for ‘Equal Opportunity’: Why Affirmative Action Isn’t Enough

Hyatt Surveils Its Workers Via IPods

Tar Sands Pipeline Risks Too Great, Canadian Unions Say
'Expect Resistance': Utah Tar Sands Project Gets Green Light
What’s At Stake When Billionaires Try to Buy Our Democracy

End of the line for daily Via Rail service in Maritimes

Construction worker dies after falling 80 feet

Spain jobless rate hits new high

‘Fiscal cliff’ has already cost U.S. jobs, report says

Fish Off Japan’s Coast Said to Contain Elevated Levels of Cesium
*
Both Romney and Obama Avoid Talk of Climate Change
*

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

October 24 Week In Review

October 24 Week In Review
by Bill Onasch


This is our “catch-up” WIR promised in our Election Extra.


More Tributes To Jerry Tucker


Happy Days Are Here Again
A headline in the Detroit News caught my eye–Autoworkers earning less in U.S. happy to compete globally. Like they teach in journalism school, there was a human interest theme centered on Debbie Werner, a single-mom of two earning 16.78 an hour at a UAW-organized GM plant in the Detroit area. After her experiences in the brutal Michigan job market she wasn’t grumbling that her pay is more than three dollars an hour less than the average production worker wage (pegged at 19.81 by the BLS in September). Werner told the reporters, “It's just an opportunity for me, it's a better life for my kids.”


Neither was Michigan Governor Rick Snyder complaining, “They're making a wage where hopefully they can have a reasonable family life.”


Sister Werner doesn’t go quite that far. Even this “happy worker” example laments, “What I make right now, I could live off of it....$16 an hour, single mom, is not going to put two kids through college.”


Currently, Tier 2 workers such as Werner–who get drastically reduced benefits as well as shrunken wages–comprise nine percent of the union workforce at GM, twelve percent at Ford, twenty percent at Chrysler. As the Tier 1 fade away like old soldiers, the Big Three is on target for matching total labor costs with the nonunionized Asian and European owned “transplants.”

October 24 News Update

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central, we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New York Times will be followed with a *. The Times pay wall policy allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Remembering Jerry Tucker
Gold Fields Fires 8500 South African Miners as Employers Seek Pay Deal

Workers accuse Wal-Mart of breaking wage, OT laws

Mexico's 'eternal' labor leaders survive reform

Workers at Chicago USCIS Center Vote Overwhelmingly to Join UE

Ford plans to shut Belgian plant

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Week In Review Election Extra

Week In Review Election Extra
October 21 2012
by Bill Onasch


My recommendations for the coming national election promised last week take as much space as a typical WIR. Another WIR in customary format covering additional topics will follow within the next few days.


I do want to pass on the news I received from Mark Dudzic that our friend and mentor Jerry Tucker passed away Friday after a long illness. This great working class fighter first made a “name” for himself when, as a UAW staffer in his hometown of St Louis, he coordinated a model state-wide mobilization of the Missouri labor movement to defeat a Chamber of Commerce sponsored Right-to-Work Law ballot measure in 1978.


His Solidarity House bosses were grateful for his efforts to protect the dues base but his career path soon ran in to trouble when he wanted to mobilize against concessions to the Big Three as well. Jerry committed the unforgivable sin of successfully challenging the one party internal regime of the UAW and was actually elected to one term on the International Executive Board. The pro-concession bureaucrats later got him off their Board and declared him persona non grata.


But Jerry continued to give guidance to the once influential UAW New Directions Movement as well as advising other unions on workplace organizing and bargaining strategies–among the most notable, the Staley workers in Decatur. He could be counted on for support of every strike solidarity action.


I got to know Jerry personally in his later years through his participation in the launching of the Labor Party, US Labor Against the War, and the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer. I will miss him greatly and will provide fuller appreciations of him by me and others soon.

Friday, October 19, 2012

October 19 News Update

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central, we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New York Times will be followed with a *. The Times pay wall policy allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

FDA finds fungus in steroid shots, meningitis toll rises
Texas to end health program if Planned Parenthood participates
Protests as Ireland's first abortion clinic opens
Boeing faces union drive at 787 plant in South Carolina
Lonmin South Africa mine disrupted as workers stay away
UR, labor unions remain unable to reach agreement on contract

SPEEA lays groundwork for 'federally protected' strike

Teamsters leader urges members to support Moroun-backed Prop 6

Court imposes punitive fee on socialists

Is Immigrant-Firing Pizza Company Getting Pork?

California Governor Vetoes Low-Wage Worker Rights
Editors resign from leading environment journal

Obama and Romney 'Climate Change Silence' Deafening

Why defeating Prop. 32 is a patient safety priority

NNU Stands Behind Lenox Hill RNs on Fair Contract to Protect Patient Care

Union for XL Foods workers weighs in on new managers

Motor Coach laying off 190 from Winnipeg plant

Locked-out Codiac Transpo drivers head west for work

Greece hit by new general strike

Newsweek to axe print edition
A Rogue Climate Experiment Outrages Scientists
*
U.S. Marriage Act Is Unfair to Gays, Court Panel Says
*
Forgotten Hero of Labor Fight; His Son’s Lonely Quest
*

Monday, October 15, 2012

October 15 News Update

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central, we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New York Times will be followed with a *. The Times pay wall policy allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Protest in downtown Las Vegas draws thousands of union workers
It’s Up to All of Us to Protect Social Security

Italian Students Rally to Save Education as Protests Erupt Across Country

Ruling on coal ash stymied in election year

A Risky Lifeline for Seniors Is Costing Some Their Homes
*
TransCanada reproached by NEB over pipeline compliance

Deepwater pipe blamed for new slick
Last-Ditch Bid in Texas to Try to Stop Oil Pipeline
*
Worker Cooked to Death at California Tuna Plant
*
South Africa police arrest 72 Gold Fields miners

XL Foods to bring back 800 laid-off Alberta workers

Zellers workers protest Target openings in Calgary

Thunder Bay service workers fight to get by

Fisheries union bashes deal

Nuclear sub in collision off US coast
Global wheat and corn stocks to fall in 2013, says US government
Little-regulated pharmacies that mix drugs for individuals stir up concerns

Romney’s Go-To Economist
*
Social Security benefits to rise 1% to 2% in 2013

Children of locked-out workers tell their story

Job openings grow across Minnesota, but quality remains poor

Austerity Protests Are Rude Awakening in Portugal
*

Sunday, October 14, 2012

October 14 Week In Review

Week In Review
October 14 2012
by Bill Onasch

Any Way You Slice It
In 1992, a hip Bill Clinton took his first presidential campaign to MTV where he was asked, “boxers or briefs?” Twenty years later, a major pizza chain has offered a substantial prize to anyone succeeding in posing this question to the two official presidential candidates in their next debate: sausage or pepperoni? The way my brain is wired two phrases immediately popped in to my mind.

The first Chancellor of modern unified Germany, Otto Bismarck, famously said, “Laws are like sausages; you don't want to see them being made.”

And German immigrants to this country, such as my grandparents, brought with them the idiom: das ist mir Wurst–it’s all sausage–conveying the message it’s all the same and I don’t care.

So I found the frivolous sausage query (of course, pepperoni is also a sausage) useful as a segue from marketing mediocre slices and pies to metaphor for the heartburn of a stomach-turning American political discourse.

It’s estimated there are currently about 247 million voting age residents in the USA. 122.4 million voted in the last presidential contest in 2008. It’s a challenge for media and pols alike to maintain excitement and participation in a process where the majority of the working class has either been legally barred from voting--or dismisses the choices offered as irrelevant buffoonery. Like during the Republican Primaries, a new front runner is now proclaimed almost daily to add a little spice to a dish neither nutritious nor tasty.