Tag: labor

We also remember

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On Memorial Day we may remember not only those who have served in the armed forces, but also the many others who have worked for – and in some cases given their lives for – progress,   social and economic justice, and democracy:

Rosa Parks

Martin King

Abraham Lincoln

James Chaney

AndrewGoodman

Michael Schwerner

Eugene Debs

Francis Perkins

Margaret Sanger

Haymarket Martyrs

Cesar Chavez

Harvey Milk

Susan B. Anthony

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire,

and many others…

(N.B.: Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were killed while registering voters in Philidelphia Miss., which is where Regan launched his 1980 campaign.)

Union, Yes! – Global Warming, No!

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At the Ohio Conference on Labor in the New Energy Economy, held at the Crown Center Plaza in Cleveland on May 18, 2009, a gathering of laborers, unionists, activists, enviromentalists, and academics considered:

  o Can we create good, family- sustaining,  union jobs,

  o that thrive in a green, efficent, ecologically correct and economically sustainable environment,

  o and produce green products and services?

The conclusion?  Yes We Can!  We all breathe the same air, and when we all pull together, we will succeed!

Unions are not part of the problem, but an integral part of the solution; what has worked in the past is not part of the solution, but part of the problem.

Thanks to Sherrod Brown, Policy Matters Ohio, North Shore Federation of Labor, COWS, and the Apollo Alliance.

Blue collar vs. White: It’s when, not if, one showers…

Washington policymakers “treat the people who take a shower after work much differently than they treat the people who shower before they go to work.”

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David Sirota writes on TruthDig: 

“United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard likes to say that Washington policymakers “treat the people who take a shower after work much differently than they treat the people who shower before they go to work.” In the 21st century Gilded Age, the blue-collar shower-after-work crowd is given the tough, while the white-collar shower-before-work gang gets the love, and never before this week was that doctrine made so clear.”

“…Last month, the same government that says it “cannot just abrogate” executives’ bonus contracts used its leverage to cancel unions’ wage contracts. As The Wall Street Journal reported, federal loans to GM and Chrysler were made contingent on those manufacturers shredding their existing labor pacts and “extract[ing] financial concessions from workers.”

While this issue may be changing – see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/us/politics/22regulate.html?hp – 

The fact is that those blue collar workers who ‘shower after work’  are treated differently than white collar workers who ‘shower before work’ . 

also: “Congressional Republicans have long supported the laws letting bankruptcy courts annul mortgage contracts for vacation homes. Those statutes help the shower-before-work clique at least retain their beachside villas, no matter how many of their speculative Ponzi schemes go bad. But for those who shower after work, it’s Adams-esque bromides against “absolving borrowers of their personal responsibility,” as the GOP announced it will oppose legislation permitting bankruptcy judges to revise mortgage contracts for primary residences.”

In general, talk of voiding labor union contracts raises little public furor, which cannot be said of allowing bankrupt financial institutions to pay large bonuses to those who made questionable decisions…

see: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090319_a_government_of_men_not_laws/