Sam Webb: Weathering the Economic Storm

-CPUSA National Chair Sam Webb talks about the current economic situation that we face in the US.
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"Last weeks data on unemployment is the latest confirmation that the economy is going south. Nothing that the federal government or Federal Reserve Bank has done so far has contained a widening and spreading economic recession. The economic downturn that was triggered by the collapse of the housing bubble and the seizing up of credit and money markets is winding its way to nearly every sector of the economy and to every region of the country.

While no one is predicting a meltdown, many analysts are not taking that possibility off the table either. One would have to go back 30 years to find economic conditions as fragile and dire as they are today. Blame for this crisis which weighs on the heaviest on working people should squarely fall on those who have their hands on the economic and political and economic levers of power and the system of capitalism..

Needed immediately are aggressive measures that to raise living standards of working people and to create jobs to rebuild our country's infrastructure. Imperative too is a quick end to the Iraq war which is draining away billions of dollars for a war that should never have been fought. And finally, measures to address the needs of the hardest hit victims and communities of this crisis are in order. Like earlier economic crises, this one too hits racially oppressed people and women with special force.

www.cpusa.org"

Lansing, MI: Billboard Displays Costs of Iraq War

from United For Peace and Justice


Fri, 03/28/2008 - 16:25 — unitedforpeace

The Greater Lansing Network Against War and Injustice, a UFPJ (United For Peace and Justice) member group, posted this billboard as part of the UFPJ billboard project, at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Francis Street, where it will remain for a month, drawing local residents' attention to the enormous daily financial costs of the continuing occupation in Iraq.

Click here to read an article about the billboard from the Lansing State Journal.

For more information about the UFPJ billboard project, contact Tony Shafton at ashafton [at] aol.com

American Axle and the 2008 elections

from PWW

Author: John Rummel

People's Weekly World Newspaper, 04/25/08 15:43

Commentary

The workers at American Axle are doing all they can. Their cause is just, they are united in battle and unions from all over are coming to this plant on the Detroit-Hamtramck border to lend support. For seven weeks now, 3,650 workers have been on strike, resisting a very profitable company’s efforts to drastically reduce their wages (by as much as 50 percent) and benefits. However, the balance of forces in this fight is anything but even and they sure could use some help from high places.

Autoworkers are fighting two enemies at once: the company and a far-right Republican government in Washington whose agenda is to make workers suffer and sacrifice for corporate profits. While Democrats are not without blame, the lion’s share of the mess we’re in rests with the Republican Party.

Of all the wrongs to make right in the November elections, those faced by labor should be put on a fast track. For 30 years, the Republican right wing has hit hard at the trade union movement —Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers was just the beginning.

The scales of justice have been so tilted toward employers they have almost fallen over. Just think about what has taken place: Tax laws that reward companies for moving production out of the country. A National Labor Relations Board that should be called the National Corporate Get-Rid-of-Your-Union Relations Board. An Occupational Safety and Health Administration that has reduced staff and closed its eyes to dangerous work conditions. Free trade agreements that have made it easy for companies to set up production all over the world, worsened poverty and inequality in every country where they have been implemented and led to a massive loss of jobs here in the United States.

In this political climate workers are supposed to feel lucky just to be working and have no right complaining about corporate salaries and the halving of their wages and benefits. “We have the flexibility to source all of our business to other locations around the world and we have the right to do so,” said American Axle CEO Dick Dauch. Work for what I say or I’ll give your job to someone else, he’s saying.

Workers can win under such conditions, but why should it be so difficult? Isn’t it about time to send the Republicans packing?

In addition to the unity and solidarity being shown on the picket line, labor needs a Democratic landslide in the November elections — a landslide that sends a message to the next president and Congress that relief for working people is needed, and a landslide that will give labor the leverage to stop and even reverse the corporate attack.

The AFL-CIO’s “McCain Revealed” campaign shows him to be no friend of labor. His voting record is dismal. He’s voted to block the Employee Free Choice Act, voted to give Bush “fast track” authority on free trade legislation and voted to block a bill to protect overtime rights. McCain continues to be a strong supporter of the Iraq war and there is no way the needs of working people are going to be met while we’re spending three trillion dollars on the war. In other words, a McCain victory will be a continuation of Bush’s policies.

On most issues facing labor, Senators Obama and Clinton have both pledged policies opposite from McCain’s. A huge anti-McCain vote in November will be a defeat for the far-right and at the same time strengthen the hand of labor, the whole working class, women and youth. A big turnout by autoworkers in November will make battles on the picket line a lot easier.



John Rummel (jrummel@pww.org) is a Michigan correspondent for the People’s Weekly World, and the Michigan organizer for the Communist Party USA

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Anyone in the Lansing area should check out and support the UAW Local 602 strike at the Lansing Delta Township plant.

UAW Local 602 website

Some of the main issues for the LDT strike are:

• Distinction between Core and Non-Core jobs (after the last UAW-GM contract, non-core jobs get paid half of what core jobs do.)
  
• Work Rules
• Grievances over treatment of workers

See the rest of the issues here: UAW Local 602 Strike Issues

some more info on the 602 strike from the Lansing State Journal's website, here.

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Longshore union plans anti-war action

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/12895/1/419/

Author: Special to the World

People's Weekly World Newspaper, 04/18/08 13:18

Nearly 100 delegates to the Longshore Caucus of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union voted last February to support an eight-hour daytime “stop-work” meeting at all West Coast ports May 1, calling for an immediate safe return of U.S. troops from Iraq.

The ILWU’s monthly newspaper, The Dispatcher, reported that caucus delegates, including several military veterans, emphasized supporting the troops by bringing them home safely and ending the war. The war’s impact on funding for domestic needs was also discussed.

Delegates to the Longshore Caucus are democratically elected from every longshore local, and set policy for the union’s Longshore Division.

The union has withdrawn its call for coordinated “stop work” meetings, but plans are still underway at most ports to speak out against the war on May 1.