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Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Machinists win tentative deal with Boeing
From: PWW
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) announced Oct. 27 that it has reached a tentative agreement with the Boeing Company on a contract that will improve job security for its members and curb the amount of work the company can outsource.
The agreement came after a five day period of talks in which federal mediators participated. The union was represented at the bargaining table by IAM International President Tom Buffenbarger and IAM General Vice President Rich Michalski.
Job security and outsourcing were critical issues in the strike that began Sept. 6. Other issues resolved by the negotiators were wages, health care benefits for current and future employees, pensions, and, according to a union statement, “work rule changes designed to improve productivity.”
A union spokesman reached by phone would not give further details of the accord. They will not be released, he said, until they can be compiled and distributed to union members at all Boeing locations.
The tentative accord has the unanimous backing of the IAM negotiating committee and will be presented to members for a ratification vote. A simple majority of the vote, which will take place within five days, is required for contract ratification.
“This tentative agreement is the result of hard work and sacrifice by many people,” said IAM Aerospace Coordinator Mark Blondin. “But no one deserves more credit than the workers at Boeing, who conducted themselves with dignity and determination throughout this ordeal. On behalf of the entire negotiating committee, I want to say it has been an honor to serve as their representatives.”
The IAM represents 27,000 workers at Boeing facilities in Kansas, Oregon, Washington and California.
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) announced Oct. 27 that it has reached a tentative agreement with the Boeing Company on a contract that will improve job security for its members and curb the amount of work the company can outsource.
The agreement came after a five day period of talks in which federal mediators participated. The union was represented at the bargaining table by IAM International President Tom Buffenbarger and IAM General Vice President Rich Michalski.
Job security and outsourcing were critical issues in the strike that began Sept. 6. Other issues resolved by the negotiators were wages, health care benefits for current and future employees, pensions, and, according to a union statement, “work rule changes designed to improve productivity.”
A union spokesman reached by phone would not give further details of the accord. They will not be released, he said, until they can be compiled and distributed to union members at all Boeing locations.
The tentative accord has the unanimous backing of the IAM negotiating committee and will be presented to members for a ratification vote. A simple majority of the vote, which will take place within five days, is required for contract ratification.
“This tentative agreement is the result of hard work and sacrifice by many people,” said IAM Aerospace Coordinator Mark Blondin. “But no one deserves more credit than the workers at Boeing, who conducted themselves with dignity and determination throughout this ordeal. On behalf of the entire negotiating committee, I want to say it has been an honor to serve as their representatives.”
The IAM represents 27,000 workers at Boeing facilities in Kansas, Oregon, Washington and California.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Financial crisis: Woman, 90, shoots herself to avoid foreclosure
from: Telegraph.co.uk
Fannie Mae, the US mortgage giant, is to forgive the mortgage debt of a 90-year-old woman after she shot herself when police tried to evict her.
By Tom Leonard in New YorkAddie Polk, a widow from Akron, Ohio, had lived in her small home for nearly 40 years but it was sold for $28,000 (£16,000) after Fannie Mae filed for foreclosure.
When sheriff's deputies came to escort the pensioner from her home last Wednesday, they heard shots from the first floor.
A neighbour found her lying on her side on her bed, a gun beside her, after shooting herself in the chest. She is now recovering in hospital.
Her plight was highlighted in Congress by the Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich on Friday before the House approved a $700 billion financial rescue package.
Fannie Mae said it would dismiss its foreclosure action, forgive Mrs Polk's mortgage and allow her to return home.
"Just given the circumstances, we think it's appropriate. It certainly made our radar screen," a spokesman said.
The decision has prompted blackly humorous claims in the American media that, if you want to save your home from foreclosure, you need to shoot yourself.
Robert Dillon, the neighbour who discovered her after she shot herself, said: "She said it was a crazy thing to do, now that she's had time to think about it."
Local police said Mrs Polk had ignored multiple notices and letters, as well as a foreclosure action filed in court.
"I'm positive she believed the deputies were going to come in, clean out the house and set her and her things on the curbs, because they did that decades ago. But that's not what happens nowadays," said sheriff's lieutenant Kandy Fatheree.
Home foreclosure rates are at record levels in the US, in many cases because buyers with adjustable interest rates could not keep up with sharp increases in monthly payments.
There has been a spate of foreclosure-related suicides, including a retired couple in Oregon and a 53-year-old woman in Massachusetts. The latter faxed her mortgage company: "By the time you foreclose on my house, I'll be dead."
Young workers do better with unions
From: PWW
For young workers who may not know what the advantages of being in a union are, the question “What’s a union gonna do for me?” was answered in a report released last week by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
The report detailed good news and bad news. The bad news is that workers aged 18-29 have the lowest unionization rates of any age group. They have been hit hardest by the stagnant wage growth over the last three decades. This is despite a substantial increase in the number of young workers with college degrees.
The good news is young workers who are in a union make an average of 12.4 percent, or about $1.75 an hour, more than non-union workers. They are also 17 percent more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 24 percent more likely to have a pension plan.
According to American Rights at Work, the Employee Free Choice Act would give workers a fair and direct path to form unions through majority sign-up, help employees secure a contract with their employer in a reasonable period of time and toughen penalties against employers who violate their rights. Sen. Barack Obama not only supports the legislation, but is a co-sponsor. Sen. McCain opposes it completely.
For young workers in the lowest-wage occupations, the study shows the contrast between union and non-union is even starker. The median young worker in a unionized low-wage occupation earned $10.62, almost two dollars an hour more than the $8.74 the median non-union young worker earned. These benefits also carried over into their health care coverage, where 40 percent of union workers are covered vs. less than 20 percent of non-union workers, and 29 percent had a pension compared to only 11 percent of their non-union counterparts.
In these tough economic times, the union advantage is not only strong, but obvious and necessary. If young workers are to survive, thrive and build a solid future, we must make sure the Employee Free Choice Act is enacted.
Melissa O’Rourke (morourke@cpusa.org) is a young worker and member of the Communist Party’s labor commission.
The report detailed good news and bad news. The bad news is that workers aged 18-29 have the lowest unionization rates of any age group. They have been hit hardest by the stagnant wage growth over the last three decades. This is despite a substantial increase in the number of young workers with college degrees.
The good news is young workers who are in a union make an average of 12.4 percent, or about $1.75 an hour, more than non-union workers. They are also 17 percent more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 24 percent more likely to have a pension plan.
According to American Rights at Work, the Employee Free Choice Act would give workers a fair and direct path to form unions through majority sign-up, help employees secure a contract with their employer in a reasonable period of time and toughen penalties against employers who violate their rights. Sen. Barack Obama not only supports the legislation, but is a co-sponsor. Sen. McCain opposes it completely.
For young workers in the lowest-wage occupations, the study shows the contrast between union and non-union is even starker. The median young worker in a unionized low-wage occupation earned $10.62, almost two dollars an hour more than the $8.74 the median non-union young worker earned. These benefits also carried over into their health care coverage, where 40 percent of union workers are covered vs. less than 20 percent of non-union workers, and 29 percent had a pension compared to only 11 percent of their non-union counterparts.
In these tough economic times, the union advantage is not only strong, but obvious and necessary. If young workers are to survive, thrive and build a solid future, we must make sure the Employee Free Choice Act is enacted.
Melissa O’Rourke (morourke@cpusa.org) is a young worker and member of the Communist Party’s labor commission.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Palin: 'I Don't Know' If Abortion Clinic Bombers Are Terrorists
from: Thinkprogress.org
In her interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said that Bill Ayers is “no question” a terrorist because he sought to destroy the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon. Palin, however, refused to apply the same label to abortion clinic bombers:
Q: Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist, under this definition, governor?
PALIN: (Sigh). There’s no question that Bill Ayers via his own admittance was one who sought to destroy our U.S. Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist. There’s no question there. Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities that uh, it would be unacceptable. I don’t know if you’re going to use the word terrorist there.
Watch it:
OPINION: A contradiction — corporations on welfare complaining about ‘socialism’
From: PWW
Author: John Wojcik
John McCain has been describing Barack Obama as a “socialist” because the Illinois senator would impose higher taxes on the wealthy than on the working class and poor. McCain says this amounts to an “unacceptable” redistribution of wealth.
Let’s grant, for a moment, that the Obama plan really amounts to redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Let’s grant, just for the moment, that this really can be defined as a form of “socialism.”
How then would we define the upward redistribution of wealth that Congress approved in the Wall Street bailout package? The deal takes tax money from folks who earn $40,000 annually and hands it to bankers who, at the low end of their scale, make $4,000,000 per year.
McCain says he wants everyone to have the chance to get rich. But doesn’t the massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich that Congress just approved make that even more impossible than it already is? I’m not an economist, by any means. It seems to me, however, that the bailout only worsens the enormous income inequality between workers and Wall Street execs. It seems to me this only puts further out of reach for more millions the age old American Dream of “moving on up.” It seems to me that Obama’s approach would put that dream a bit more in reach and allow more people to move up a bit. It seems to me that the Obama approach makes for at least a little more economic democracy.
So far, nothing has been done to help bail out Main Street and none of the $700 billion approved for Wall Street has yet been used to help anyone other than the Wall Street moneymakers themselves.
Thus far Wall Street bankers have used the handout that we pay for to buy up other companies. They have even used some of it to go on $500,000 all-expense-paid “retreats” to discuss their next moves. They decided, during one of these “retreats,” to use some of the bailout money to pay lobbyists who will — guess what — lobby for additional taxpayer handouts. There is also evidence that quite a bit of the bailout money they have already received is being hoarded.
Be all that as it may, one thing is clear. They are not using the money for what we were told they were going to use it: pumping it into the market so that credit would again be available not just to Wall Street but to Main Street.
The issue during this major crisis of American capitalism is not that Obama or anyone else is trying to slip “socialism” into the picture. The issue is, as the economist, Dean Baker put it recently:
“Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson mailed $150 billion in checks to the big banks. From that point forward, the CEOs and all other top executives of these banks are now our dependents. They are living off the tax dollars of schoolteachers in Iowa, truck drivers in Montana and even Joe the Plumber.”
jwojcik @ pww.org
Author: John Wojcik
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 10/24/08 17:14
| | |
John McCain has been describing Barack Obama as a “socialist” because the Illinois senator would impose higher taxes on the wealthy than on the working class and poor. McCain says this amounts to an “unacceptable” redistribution of wealth.
Let’s grant, for a moment, that the Obama plan really amounts to redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Let’s grant, just for the moment, that this really can be defined as a form of “socialism.”
How then would we define the upward redistribution of wealth that Congress approved in the Wall Street bailout package? The deal takes tax money from folks who earn $40,000 annually and hands it to bankers who, at the low end of their scale, make $4,000,000 per year.
McCain says he wants everyone to have the chance to get rich. But doesn’t the massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich that Congress just approved make that even more impossible than it already is? I’m not an economist, by any means. It seems to me, however, that the bailout only worsens the enormous income inequality between workers and Wall Street execs. It seems to me this only puts further out of reach for more millions the age old American Dream of “moving on up.” It seems to me that Obama’s approach would put that dream a bit more in reach and allow more people to move up a bit. It seems to me that the Obama approach makes for at least a little more economic democracy.
So far, nothing has been done to help bail out Main Street and none of the $700 billion approved for Wall Street has yet been used to help anyone other than the Wall Street moneymakers themselves.
Thus far Wall Street bankers have used the handout that we pay for to buy up other companies. They have even used some of it to go on $500,000 all-expense-paid “retreats” to discuss their next moves. They decided, during one of these “retreats,” to use some of the bailout money to pay lobbyists who will — guess what — lobby for additional taxpayer handouts. There is also evidence that quite a bit of the bailout money they have already received is being hoarded.
Be all that as it may, one thing is clear. They are not using the money for what we were told they were going to use it: pumping it into the market so that credit would again be available not just to Wall Street but to Main Street.
The issue during this major crisis of American capitalism is not that Obama or anyone else is trying to slip “socialism” into the picture. The issue is, as the economist, Dean Baker put it recently:
“Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson mailed $150 billion in checks to the big banks. From that point forward, the CEOs and all other top executives of these banks are now our dependents. They are living off the tax dollars of schoolteachers in Iowa, truck drivers in Montana and even Joe the Plumber.”
jwojcik @ pww.org
Monday, October 20, 2008
McCain links to anti-union casino no surprise to workers
A year earlier, Sen. John McCain enjoyed a gambling weekend at Foxwoods with lobbyists Scott Reed and Rick Davis, in seeming conflict of interest with his role as chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Davis is now McCain’s campaign manager.
Casino management ties to McCain, exposed last month in The New York Times, come as no surprise. McCain is an ardent foe of workers’ right to organize.
Foxwoods’ management is refusing to recognize the dealers’ union vote on the grounds that the casino, located on Mashantucket Pequot sovereign territory, should be exempt from National Labor Relations Board rulings.
Because the casino is a corporate entity at which nearly all workers and customers are not tribe members, a court ruled that the casino workers are covered by the NLRB.
Commenting on the ruling last year, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal called that ruling a “historic victory” that “opens a new era for working men and women at tribal casinos in Connecticut and across the country.
“While we respect the principles of tribal sovereignty, this ruling guarantees that basic rights deserve respect, no matter who the employee,” Blumenthal said.
This week, casino management responded by filing an appeal of the NLRB order to negotiate a contract, and announced the layoff of 700 workers.
This billion dollar casino is the world’s largest, and Connecticut’s biggest private employer. The dealers’ union web site is in eight languages, indicating the diversity of the workforce.
Since the union election Foxwoods has been stalling for time, trying to create an atmosphere which causes dealers to quit or be fired. The management has also seen fit to award across-the-board raises to virtually every other occupation in the casino complex while dealers’ salaries have remained stagnant.
Dealers recruited from the original casino to work in the new MGM tower are required to serve a three-month probationary period which allows Foxwoods to fire them at will with no recourse for reinstatement at either casino. The net result of these firings is one less union dealer for Foxwoods to contend with.
Dealers have been required to meet certain physical characteristics in order to be considered for work in the MGM tower. Men are required to remove all facial hair and have a physique that can adorn the cover of GQ Magazine and women must have the proportions of a Barbie Doll.
As irritating as these requirements might seem, the issue that caused the Foxwoods dealers and the UAW to set up informational picket lines last May is the fact that Foxwoods separated Foxwoods and MGM dealers tips (tokes). “One casino, one union, one toke, no smoke” was the most popular chant, also addressing the demand for a smoke-free work environment. The UAW and the dealers feel that this is yet another attempt by Foxwoods to divide and destroy the solidarity of the dealers after their legally awarded election victory.
The May support rally was attended by local, state and national politicians and union officers including Connecticut AFL-CIO President John Olsen; UAW Region 9A Director Bob Madore and state Attorney General Blumenthal, as well as members of other unions and organizations. Of course, the real honored guests were the Foxwoods dealers themselves.
McCain’s ties to the gambling industry raise the stakes of the presidential election for the dealers as their struggle for a union contract continues.
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