Monday, January 28, 2013

January 28 Week In Review

Week In Review
January 28 2013
by Bill Onasch

Dense Top–Sieve Below
I don’t blame the hard working professionals belonging to AFGE but nearly all news these days from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is bad. This past week an annual report on union membership revealed union density–the unionized share of the workforce, now standing at 11.3 percent–is the lowest in ninety-seven years. Since there were few public sector unions in 1916, it’s safe to conclude that the present 6.6 percent density in the private sector is the lowest since anybody has kept track.

In many respects density is a more telling indicator of union health than the total number of union members. Membership rolls can fluctuate due to market cycles largely beyond control of traditional collective bargaining.

Other factors have long been in play that affect both measures.

* Since Bill Clinton drove through NAFTA in 1993, later followed up by the China trade deal, unionized employers in North America have offshored the work of millions.

* Conversely, capital from outside the USA opened “transplants” here–rapidly winning market share in auto, rubber, and other industries while remaining mostly nonunion.

* And, of course, technology has greatly reduced the number of jobs in manufacturing even as the USA remains an industrial powerhouse, and the same goes in rail and longshore despite an explosion of global trade.

Unions can, and once did adjust to a changing composition of the workforce. One of America’s biggest unions retains the archaic name of Teamsters. Except for UPS deliveries on Mackinac Island–where motorized vehicles are banned–no members of this union any longer hold reins of horse-drawn wagons. The Teamsters made the adjustment to motorized trucks. Later, prodded by organizing successes of the Minnesota leadership that emerged after the 1934 Minneapolis strikes, the IBT expanded beyond their traditional base of elite driver-salesmen to embrace the entire trucking and warehouse industry, inside and out. In recent years they also attracted two major rail unions to merge in to their ranks and even have contracts here and there in manufacturing, printing and public sector jobs.

January 28 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.

House returns as Idle No More protesters gather
Canadians want change on aboriginal policy, poll suggests

Still on Strike, a Bus Union Sees a Threat to Its Culture *
Talks in Bus Strike Are Set; City Isn’t Taking Part *

Bangladesh Factory Fire That Killed 7 Made European Brands *
Barge with 80,000 gallons oil hits bridge, leaks
Greek workers plan further strikes
More Than 300 Labor Board Decisions Could Be Nullified *
General Motors’ turnaround bolsters Fairfax plant
Beef labeling rule is caught in bureaucratic limbo
Twin Cities janitors, security officers prepare for possible strike
Workers over 55 nearly half of Alberta labour force
Alberta union warns against job cuts to solve money woes
Vale won't be charged in mine worker's death
Athens 10-day metro strike ends
Thousands join hospital closure demo
Child labour found at Apple suppliers
EU carbon price crashes to record low
U.S. Envoy Apologizes for Ship’s Grounding on Philippine Coral Reef *
Wife of Female Army Officer Can Join Spouses Club*
Court Overturns EPA’s Biofuels Mandate *
Energy-Guzzling Cities Changing Weather 1,000 Miles Away
St. Francis Xavier University faculty on strike
Bulgaria nuclear vote 'invalid'
Teaching shake-up strike threat
The path to government inefficiency is paved with threats of spending cuts
An Oil Boom Takes a Toll on Health Care *

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

January 23 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.

New York Teacher Evaluation Talks Break Down
Fracking destroys our health, climate
Record Support as Roe v. Wade Turns 40
Bus drivers are unjustly targeted by Mayor Bloomberg
Governor of Nebraska Backs Route for Pipeline *
Many Medicaid Patients Could Face Higher Fees *
Postal Service Losing Out on Federal Contracts *

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

January 22 Week In Review

Week In Review
January 22, 2013
by Bill Onasch

The Circumstances of All the Pomp
The “public” component of the second inauguration of President Obama dominates the news in this country. Reflecting the watchword of austerity, yesterday’s spectacle was not quite as lavish as the first. There were only two Inaugural Balls instead of ten four years ago. Fewer bus loads from the hinterland were subsidized and only about a quarter of the number of spectators–about a half-million-- braved the elements on the Mall.

But like four years ago, the ceremony closest to a coronation as Americans ever get upstaged a national holiday honoring Dr Martin Luther King Jr. This calendar bonus for the handlers of the nation’s first Black President was helpful in their drive to transform King’s legacy as a great fighter for civil and worker rights in to an icon as dull and lifeless as his unflattering statue, also on the Mall.

I devoted the entire January 19, 2009 Week In Review to examining the struggles that King, along with trade unionists such as A Philip Randolph, and nationalists such as Malcolm X, led that, among other civil rights accomplishments, won voting rights for millions of African-Americans. The President acknowledges that he could never have been elected to the highest position in the land without those battles.

January 22 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.

Subsidies and Concessions: The Never-Ending Corporate Shake-Down
CEOs want to raise the retirement age to 70
Big win for labor in Chicago
Students, universities at impasse as summit approaches
Mining company takes legal action against Quebec
Provinces reach deal to save on 6 generic drugs
Nations agree on legally binding mercury rules
Turkey raids target banned Marxist group DHKP-C
Ecuadorian tribe gets reprieve from oil intrusion
Regulations on Fracking Are Revised *
Rally in Athens against Greece's Golden Dawn
Military Rules Leave Gay Spouses Out in Cold *
Rift Widens Over Mining of Uranium in Virginia *
Fiscal Footnote: Big Senate Gift to Drug Maker *
Profits of World's 100 Wealthiest Could End Poverty
AFSCME Supporters Protest Nutter’s Austerity Measures
How the tar sands produce dirty coal
Ontario sets the date to repeal Bill 115
What is causing Australia's heatwave?
Despite a Whiff of Unpleasant Exaggeration, a City’s Pollution Is Real *
How High Could the Tide Go? *

Friday, January 18, 2013

January 18 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.

We will observe the MLK Holiday Monday. Next update Tuesday, January 22

Keystone XL pipeline: Bad for the environment and Canadian workers
John Kerry owns stock in Canadian pro-Keystone XL firms

Fortified by Global Warming, Deadly Fungus Poisons Corn Crops, Causes Cancer
A Program for Combating Poverty
Upper Big Branch Superintendent Sentenced
Queen declines to intervene in Chief Spence's protest
Devonshire nurses approve new agreement
Concerns over arsenic raised at Yukon Water Board hearing
Sydney bakes in hottest day on record as bushfires rage
Keeping the Boats Moving Along a Mississippi Dwindled by Drought *

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

January 16 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.

New York School Bus Drivers Go on Strike *
NYC Bus Strike Kicks Off to Fight Privatization of Yellow Buses

Workers challenge union-busting at Progressive Rail
Bus Stewards Win More Routes Through Alliance with Riders
Inequality Rages as Dwindling Wages Lock Millions in Poverty
El Salvador Airline Servicer Fires 96 Workers for Forming a Union
Illinois Gov. Quinn Continues His War on Public Service Workers
NASA Finds 2012 Sustained Long-Term Climate Warming Trend
Idle No More activities planned nationwide
Protesters arrested at pipeline hearing in Vancouver
Quebec to proceed with 'dying with dignity' legislation
Renault to cut 7,500 French jobs
Black carbon causes twice as much global warming than previously thought
US east-coast cities are 'sitting ducks' for storms, says top Obama scientist
Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa?
U.S. weighs military aid for France in Mali
In deal to avert ‘cliff,’ a blow to Obamacare
Budget chief: Prepare for across-the-board cuts
Federal workers in the crosshairs, again
An Oil Town Where Men Are Many, and Women Are Hounded *
For ‘Party of Business,’ Allegiances Are Shifting *
When Public Outperforms Private in Services *
EPA Changed Course After Oil Company Protested *
Rights Group Reports on Abuses of Surveillance and Censorship Technology *
Detroit City Council targets city employees for budget cuts

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

January 15 Week In Review by Bill Onasch

A Memorable Anniversary
Last Thursday marked the tenth anniversary of an historic event I was privileged to attend–the Founding of US Labor Against the War. Okay, maybe Doris Kearns Goodwin will never write a book about it and Spielberg is unlikely to enshrine it in cinema. But, for the first time since the days of Eugene V Debs, union forces came together to oppose a U.S. war from the beginning–in fact before the actual invasion of Iraq.

The run-up to that war lasted several months. In the autumn of 2002 some members of Teamsters Local 705 in Chicago–one of the biggest in the IBT–proposed at a union meeting that the Local actively oppose the threat of war on Iraq. The then principal officer, Gerry Zero, asked them to bring their idea to the Executive Board. Though somewhat suspicious of a brush-off, that invitation was accepted. That led to a motion by the Board for the Local to host a national conference of unionists opposed to the war threat–which was overwhelmingly approved by the ranks.

That’s how more than a hundred of us, from 76 union organizations, came to spend a Saturday in January at the old brick 705 Hall in balmy Chicago. The biggest scoop this site ever scored was a short, widely reproduced report on the gathering I filed less than 24 hours after adjournment.

The very next weekend KC Labor Against the War was established. A month later, KCLAW sponsored a Labor and War Teach-In at UMKC. A few weeks after that ATU Local 1287, after a heated debate, voted by a narrow margin to endorse USLAW.

There were at least weekly demonstrations across the country against the threat of war in Iraq for months prior to the March, 2003 invasion. Both USLAW and KCLAW were prominently involved. After the invasion, mass actions tapered off. But USLAW continued education and winning antiwar resolutions in unions.

But even more was done. USLAW established contacts with Iraqi trade unionists and started raising material support for them. Iraqi unionists were toured here in the USA to tell their story to American unionists. In Kansas City we were able to bring in an Iraqi unionist who had been living in exile in Canada. Such war-time solidarity was also an historic first.

The focus of USLAW for the first several years was on the Iraq war. But they didn’t fold up shop when U.S. combat missions ended there. USLAW continues its basic project opposing the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

It would hardly be appropriate to say Long Live to any antiwar group. The ultimate goal is to end all wars and go out of business. But we hope USLAW will live and prosper as long as the need remains to oppose unjust wars fought in our name.

Idle No More
Mainstream media in this country carries little news from Canada. The most prominent story recently featured has been the amazing series of trades and free agent signings by the Toronto Blue Jays. This studied ignorance is partially due to a Big Brother complex but is also used to keep us in unstudied ignorance about a higher level of class, democratic, and environmental struggle north of the border.

Particularly inspiring is the recent Idle No More movement launched by First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples, that has won widespread support from non-aboriginal Canadians as well. Their actions are in response to laws, imposed by the Tory Harper government. that are summarized by Russell Diaboto, Editor of First Nations Strategy Bulletin to:

“1) Focus all its efforts to assimilate First Nations into the existing federal and provincial orders of government of Canada; 2) Terminate the constitutionally protected and internationally recognized Inherent, Aboriginal and Treaty rights of First Nations.”

In pursuing these goals environmental protection goes down the tube as well–a matter of concern to all residents of Canada–in fact all on this planet.

Winona LaDuke, an Ojibwe resident of the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, who is a respected writer on Native and environmental issues, and was Ralph Nader’s Vice-Presidential running mate in 2000, wrote a good introduction to Idle No More published on Common Dreams. She opens,

“Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence enters her fourth week of a hunger strike outside the Canadian parliament building, thousands of protesters voice their support in Los Angeles, London, Minneapolis, and New York City. Spence and the protesters of the Idle No More movement are drawing attention to deplorable conditions in native communities and the recent passage of Bill C-45, which sidesteps most Canadian environmental laws.”

She goes on to describe the poverty on Reservations and the horrendous suicide rate among Native youth–issues shared on both sides of the border. And she details how mining companies such as DeBeers have uprooted whole villages to plunder Native lands. All of this fits in to Tory policy to expand the tar sands, mining, and drilling in the arctic region.

In addition to the hunger strike, the movement has blocked highways and rail lines and carries out frequent “flash mob” demonstrations at shopping malls. Recently even bigger actions have been taking place. The CBC reported,

“Thousands of protesters packed into West Edmonton Mall Sunday afternoon, filling the halls with the sounds of chanting and drumbeats, to signal that the Idle No More protests will continue even after Friday’s meeting with the Prime Minister.”

Judy Rebick, a well-known social justice activist, educator and author, wrote of Idle No More in her blog on rabble,

“It is a 21st-century movement decentralized and deeply democratic in the sense that much of the initiative belongs to the grassroots. In that way, it looks like Occupy but as Pam Palmater, now a spokesperson for Idle No More, has explained, it is a movement of a group of people with a common identity and despite the different history and cultures of their nations, a common history in relation to Canada. In this way, the Idle No More movement is better compared to the civil rights movement and women’s movement.”

Such a movement is a complement to the “Maple Spring” student-worker struggles in Quebec, the union strikes and protests against austerity in Ontario, and the alliance that turned out thousands for a demonstration in Vancouver Monday against plans for a tar sands pipeline to a British Columbia port.

They are examples worthy of imitation south of the border as well.

A Healthy Response
An initial press release from the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer began,

“More than two hundred union leaders and activists gathered in Chicago for the Labor Campaign's fourth national conference to strategize about next steps for labor in the movement to win universal health care. With government officials from both major parties contemplating cuts in Medicare as part of a ‘grand bargain,’ delegates resolved to stand up to any cuts in this cornerstone social insurance program.

“Conferees were welcomed and inspired by Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, who shared lessons of her union's recent successful strike. Lewis drew important parallels between the struggles for quality public education and quality universal health care.

“A second inspiring keynote came from Nicole Bernard representing the French CGT Federation of Social Security and Health Care Workers who described the struggle by French workers to defend their national health care plan and pledged strong support for American efforts to win single payer.”

We’ll pass along more details as they become available.

When the Going Gets Tough...
A CP/AP story reports,

“The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency resigned abruptly last week, reportedly to protest the Obama administration's apparent plans to approve TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline in the coming months. The American environmental movement is abuzz following a New York Post report that Lisa Jackson suddenly quit the post because she doesn't want to be at the helm of the agency when the White House rubber-stamps the controversial project. That could happen as early as March or April, the paper suggested.”

Don’t forget: we provide a digest of links to news stories of interest to working people–even from Canada–Monday-Friday by 9AM Central on the Labor Advocate Blog.

That’s all for this week.



    

January 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.

NYC School Bus Drivers to Strike Beginning Wednesday
Bus union holds rally at NYC City Hall
School Bus Drivers’ Union Calls for Strike on Wednesday *

German Union Members Seek Better Treatment for U.S. Wireless Workers
Union Members Recommit to Winning Improved and Expanded Medicare for All
Thousands jeer Northern Gateway hearings in Vancouver
End Near? Doomsday Clock Holds at 5 'Til Midnight
Teachers' Strikes and the Fight Against Austerity in Ontario
Ecuadorian Tribe Vows to 'Die Fighting' Oil Company
Big Chill vs. Global Warming: What's Going On?
Lincoln: Images of History
Maine Labor History Mural Finally Sees Light of Day
MNA Efforts to Improve Staffing at DMH’s Brockton Multiser
Layoffs hit University of Saskatchewan
Workers raiding retirement funds to pay the bills
Union of Subway Drivers Urges Slower Train Speeds *

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Thursday, January 10, 2013

January 10 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.

Truck Drivers Clinch New Power with First Union Contract at L.A. Ports
Health Care and Profits, a Poor Mix *
Ontario teachers, McGuinty on collision course
Hilda Solis quits cabinet position
NYC ferry crash: at least 50 injured
Record Heat Fuels Widespread Fires in Australia *
For Americans Under 50, Stark Findings on Health *
Seven Injured After Crane Collapses in Queens *
Union-run trust seeks Chrysler stock sale

Monday, January 7, 2013

January 7 Week In Review Now Online

You can view the new WIR by clicking here

January 7 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.

Together Again: California Nurses and NUHW Join Forces against Kaiser
For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall *
Could Climate Change Boost Toxic Algal Blooms in the Oceans?
Health care tax hikes for 2013 may be just a start
In a Year of Politicians and Bad News, Surprising Stories of Resistance
Canada's First Nations protest heralds a new alliance

Kyoto climate change treaty sputters to a sorry end
Canada's "Maple Spring"
More layoffs mean fewer city services, unions say
Weyburn Wal-Mart wins appeal to count union decertification votes
Employers Must Offer Family Care, Affordable or Not *
American Cities Drown in Debt
Ontario imposes contracts on public school teachers
Hunger-striking chief urges unity with Idle No More
New EI changes take effect today
Quebec's striking ambulance workers demand negotiations
Canadian PM to meet First Nations
As Biofuel Demand Grows, So Do Guatemala’s Hunger Pangs *
Ex-Officer Is First From C.I.A. to Face Prison for a Leak *
Health Insurers Raise Some Rates by Double Digits *
Poverty in Kansas: Some fear rules cast poor families adrift
China journalists in rare strike
Hundreds in Peru Balk at Relocation From Site of Mine *