Workers Unite Film Festival to release Full Schedule April 1st, 2012

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March 31st, 2012

After months of outreach, screening and jurying, the team behind the first annual Workers Unite Film Festival, to be held May 4th, 5th and 6th in the heart of NYC, near Columbus Circle, is proud to announce the full schedule for the upcoming event will be released and hopefully online by April 1st!

We have built two nights in celebration of our recent heroes of the working people's movement - The NY Taxi Workers Alliance - recently chartered as the first new, national union in over fifty years by the AFL-CIO, is our honoree for Friday night May 4th, at 7PM. The Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, will be our honoree for Saturday May 5th, for the whole day. We will celebrate their efforts to educate a new generation of active and informed labor leaders to carry on the decades old fight for worker dignity and worker's rights. We have a wonderful slate of films for both days.

Sunday May 6th is our celebration of "Films From the Front Lines," a variety of new films about current battles across the country and from around the world to fight for worker/labor rights as human rights and civil rights.

We have a full afternoon of films from Wisconisn, Ohio, Slovakia, Bangladesh, to right in our own backyards here in NYC - organizing drives to save jobs at an iconic cookie factory and the fight to get a fair shake for the hundreds of hard-working folks who make your lattes every morning.

So check out the schedule! Buy tickets! The festival order site will be up this week. Tell your friends!!!

 

Triangle Shirtwaist Memorial a Huge Success, March 23rd, 2012

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March 26th, 2012

The celebration in honor of those women who died jumping to their death from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory 101 years ago was a powerful and timely event.  The weather was perfect for hundreds of dedicated activists to come out and show their respect to those who lost their lives due to past employer greed, while honoring the role unions have played in fighting for safer working conditions right up into the present day.

Labor unions fight for worker safety every day, all over the world. As President Alvarez, of the NYC Central Labor Council, Bruce Raynor of Unite, Amy Muldoon, from CWA 1180 and many other leaders reinforced throughout their rousing speeches to those assembled, while a living wage is critical to workers to maintain lives with dignity, the safety and healthfulness of working conditions of all workers on the job is paramount in all our efforts to protect the health and welfare of our members. Without these basic human rights of health and safety, we as workers are no better than the oppressed serfs in Europe from hundreds of years in the past.



 

 Shirtwaists in memory of those who perished.

 

 

 

March 22nd is a National Day of Action To Fight Verizon's Greed

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March 21st, 2012

March 22nd, 2012 is a day of action around the country to protest the ongoing gross unfairness of Verizon, as it refuses to offer a reasonable settlement to over 40,000 striking employees, while tripling the pay of its CEO to over $23 million!! That's in one year folks. Verizon, while screaming it is nearly broke - has managed to find over $243 million under the couch cushions to reward to executives. These same executives have done nothing to build a company based upon treating workers and their families with respect, or pay them a decent level wage and benefits.

The NYC Central Labor Council, together with many unions in the NYC area, will once again be marching down on West Street to remind the overpaid Verizon executives that the people of NYC back union families, back union workers and demand decent pay for union jobs! No concessions on paying a living wage.

Go to: http://local.americawantstowork.org/weareone/events/show/6063 for up to the minute information.

And go here to tell Verizon's greedy CEO what you think:http://action.cwa-union.org/c/1153/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4005

See you at the rally! And please take video to screen at our "films from the front lines," day of our Workers Unite Film Festival. Thanks!

Dean Hubbard's New Blog Rocks! Go Read It Now!

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March 17th, 2012

Dean Hubbard, excellent international labor professor, talented legal counsel for TWU Local 100, strong supporter of the Workers Unite Film Festival 2012, has a brand new blog: Restructuring the Edifice. "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar...it comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring." Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hi lead off posts discuss whether the official labor movement will stand behind the very active "99% Spring," planned by OWS to return the issues of all workers back to the front and center of our national discussion.

Labor has received critical and timely support from OWS forces, but this collaboration is still a work in progress.

Read Dean's excellent piece: http://www.deanhubbard.com/

 

Films or Video of NYC Labor Unions and OWS Demonstrations Needed

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March 15, 2012

We're putting out a call to all you professional and amatuer filmmakers or video folks. The NYC CLC and the AFL-CIO are looking for any good footage of labor unions in NYC, such as CWA 1180 and the Verizon strikers, who supported or coordinated with Occupy Wall Street activists. Also looking for footage of OWS folks coming out in support of a lbor union strike or work action. 

If you have any decent footage - please email us at andrew@workersunitefilmfestival.org and we will put you in touch with Ginger - the fantastic Communications Director of the NYC Central Labor Council.

World's Longest Unemployment Line a Huge Success!

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March 8th 2012,

A number of labor and labor arts groups pulled off a stunning visual display of what it means to get a pink slip from your employer during these tough economic times. Several thousand dedicated activists, from labor unions, arts groups, OWS groups and community and social activists came together for 14 minutes on a very cold morning to put on this fantastic piece of political performance art. Led by Mark Plesent, Producing Artistic Director of the Working Theater, and Kristin Marting, Artistic Director of HERE, supported by The NYC Central Labor Council and dozens of it's member unions - the line stretched silently and powerfully from the bull on Bowling Green - all the way through Union Square and to several locations in midtown. Bravo to all involved.

This clip is a teaser for a longer trailer that will be screened at the WUFF in May on The Working Theater and how arts, media and outreach to the public through these important cultural methods is critical for getting worker's messages across to the wider public discussion. Think Occupy Wall Street, think The World's Longest Unemployment Line, think the Workers Unite Film Festival!!!

                       The next pink slip could be yours! Quality Jobs at Dignified Wages.

Wall Street Greed Fueling Rising Gas Prices

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February 28, 2012

Though this is not directly an issue about organizing workers, it is directly an issue that effects the lives of millions of working people. It also will likely effect the tone and outcome of the coming election. If you don't think that speculators, almost all members of the GOP, have this in mind as they drive gas and oil prices through the roof, think again. To them, their manipulation of the commodities markets is a gift that keeps on giving. Once, through paying them enormous unearned profits for playing at the global casino, then a second time, in further slowing our economic recovery, thereby giving whichever of the current crop of  GOP primary nutcases a better leg to stand on as they try to find any genuine issue with which to beat up on President Obama. Appparently this malfesance has been well documented since back in 2008, but nothing has yet been done to stop it. That should change immediately.

I don't normally cite CNN, but this article by Bernie Sanders, one of the few true hero's of working people in the Senate, lays out in detail this crime being perpetrated against all Americans. This is a crime that hits especially hard when you make under $40,000 a year, with two or three children and driving to your job is your only way to get to work. These speculators should be in jail, not celebrating their good fortune down at Delmonicos with lavish dinners.

You can read it at:http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/28/opinion/sanders-gas-speculation/index.html?hpt=hp_bn9

During This Job Scarce Recovery Corporations Spend Their Hoarded Cash Buying Back Stock

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February 27th, 2012

Nelson D. Schwartz, of the New York Times, in a great article from November 21st, 2011, examined the strange and awful spectacle of a jobless recovery, fueled by corporations spending their mountains of hoarded cash on buying back their own stock. If even a percentage of this cash was aimed at hiring workers and committing to a variety of green industries, infrastructure construction, or a host of publicly beneficial and profitable efforts, we might be looking at unemployment numbers substantially lower than they currently appear. But that might entail some effort and risk. Why bother when unbounded greed is so easily satisfied?

Of course this would also look better for President Obama and the Democrats this election year. Since the goal of the GOP and their corporate supporters is to see anybody other than President Obama elected - this grossly greedy and socially wasteful misuse of corporate profits will continue. This of course goes hand in hand with the sudden meteroic rise in gas prices. Funny how that always seems to happen as a Democrat heads for re-election.

Carl Ginsburg, who has graciously joined our Advisory Board, writing in CounterPunch, details another fascinating angle on this topic and brings in the ridiculousness of Charles Murray's recent book on the decline of white America. Many thanks to Carl for writing this piece and letting us use it here.

"Tells the Facts and Names the Names"
CounterPunch
Edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
 
Blaming the Poor
Yes, It's Charles Murray, Singing for his Supper
By Carl Ginsburg
 
There are many weapons in the public relations arsenal of the 1 per cent. An old stand-by in that stockpile is to fault "the family," a predictable verbal assault invoked to shift the debate away from the gross pocket-stuffing that defines our time. As poverty and inequality engulf America today - the greatest transfer of wealth upward in the nation's history - a new barrage of insults is aimed at those most in distress, with claims of floundering family values, failed responsibility, cultural shortcomings, and the like.
   These assaults are now being given prominent play on the battlefronts of the media. From Charles Murray, always the good soldier, ensconced in his ideological bunker at the American Enterprise Institute, arrives a new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. It describes income inequality as "more of a symptom than a cause."  Murray is quoted in the New York Times as saying, "When the economy recovers, you'll still see all these problems persisting for reasons that have nothing to do with money and everything to do with culture."  
   In the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof bemoans the "eclipse of traditional family patterns." He says that a "chunk of working-class America risks being calcified into an underclass, marked by drugs, despair, family decline, incarceration rates, and a diminishing role of jobs and education." Referring to Daniel Patrick Moynihan's incendiary 1965 report on black families, Kristof concludes, "Moynihan was right to sound the alarms."
"The situation is independent of outside influence and has to be dealt with from within," Moynihan told an interviewer in 1984, reflecting on his 1965 report. "It is beyond economics."
    Beyond economics? Cash hoarding is up. Way up. U.S. companies are now sitting on $2 trillion in cash, much of it being used in stock buybacks and executive bonuses, making the 1 per cent even richer. But you won't see those weapons - notions of failed responsibility, cultural shortcomings and moral bankruptcy - targeted at the super-elites. Instead, we are told that sitting on this essential capital derives from a failure of "confidence" in consumers - whose wages and buying power are stagnant. One more grand obfuscation in the class war. Never mind that some of that cash hoard comes from U.S. taxpayers - more than $130 billion remains to be repaid from the financial bailout, according to a report of the special inspector general.
   Turns out family values are just the cover for an assault on family assets. As more and more people lose their homes to foreclosure, the aspiring are taking financial advantage in many places, such as Atlanta, where government subsidies for landlords are now to be captured. This is expected to be the worst in recent years for families facing foreclosure. The backlog of properties to be processed, by some estimates may run as high as 10 million additional residences to come on the auction block. Properties for a song and rents for a chorus - you gotta live somewhere.   
   Much of the 1 per cent steers its growing wealth into financial instruments, seeking double-digit returns. Private equity firms, where minimum buy-ins in eight digits are common, continue to hit high returns for those very responsible investors. One company alone, Apple, holds $100 billion in reserve.  
   Marching in lockstep with the cash hoarding comes wage discipline, a well used weapon of the 1 per cent. Today, close to 45 per cent of food stamp recipients are working adults, as taxpayers continue to foot the bill for the substandard wages of business: why exactly is taxpayer money needed to supplement wages? As Les Leopold argues persuasively in The Looting of America,for the last half-century productivity increases in the workplace have gone to owners, not even shared with the workforce. Had wages kept paced with worker productivity, estimates Leopold, average worker pay would be $16 per hour higher. "Nearly all of it was snatched up by the owners of capital," he writes.
   The warriors of profit are driving forward on all fronts, "diving into a wide range of riskier assets: emerging countries' stocks and bonds; real estate; ... commodity funds; fine art; private-equity funds, which buy stakes in nonpublic companies," Leopold writes.  
In 2010, according to a Centers for Disease Control study, the percentage of American women being screened for breast and cervical cancers declined. The upshot of this offensive carried out by and for the 1 per cent meant that fewer American women had the resources to undergo cancer checks. "[T]here is good evidence," wrote the New York Times, "that ... screening for these cancers can reduce illness and save lives."  
   Even with guns to their heads, you would have trouble convincing unemployed young people, those 18-24 years old, that their plight is "beyond economics." Their employment has dropped to 54.3 per cent, the lowest level since the government began tracking this data in 1948. And for those in this age group who are employed, there has been a 6 per cent decline in median weekly earnings since 2007. The minimum wage in New York State is still $7.25 an hour in 2012. "Beyond economics"? More than one out of six children live in a household with food insecurity, which means they do not always know where they will find their next meal. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture report, 16.2 million children under 18 in the U.S.A. live in this condition - unable to consistently access nutritious and adequate amounts of food necessary for a healthy life. Is this what constitutes "independent of outside influence"?
   "Persistent poverty is America's great moral challenge, but it's far more than that," fired off Kristof at those already riddled by poverty in his Times piece. The war on poor people soldiers on.  CP
 
Carl Ginsburg is on the staff of National Nurses United. You can learn more about the activities of the nurses union at www.protestintheusa.org.   
   

How Occupy Can Work with Labor to Win, A West Coast Story

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February 24th, 2012

In a great story on Salon.com, Josh Edelson details how OWS helped support the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in their battle against EGT, a multinational conglomerate, who had tried to bust the union. While EGT had fought against the ILWU for over a year, the militant union fought back.

A victory by EGT would have emboldened employers up and down the coast to seek to free themselves of ILWU influence.  And if the union — with the help of the Occupy movement — had not defied the law, EGT would have succeeded.

The Longview struggle began last March when, after initial discussions with ILWU Local 21, EGT announced its intention to run its new grain terminal without them.  The ILWU held protest rallies, and joined the Port of Longview’s lawsuit charging that EGT was bound by the union’s contract with the publicly owned port.  The union may have had a good legal case.  But so did Washington’s Boeing workers when their boss blamed their strikes for its decision to take new work to South Carolina. Boeing mostly got away with it anyway.

Read more at http://www.salon.com/2012/02/24/occupy_helps_labor_win_on_the_west_coast/

Workers Unite Film Festival Teams Up with Working Theater and SVA - More on the FAA Bill Travesty

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February 23rd, 2012

Workers Unite Film Festival has teamed up with the amazing and incredible Working Theater in NYC - http://www.theworkingtheater.org/ - and NYC's School of Visual Arts (SVA) Graduate Social Documentary film department, to film and create a short about the upcoming 'world's longest unemployment line," on March 6th, 2012 from 8AM to 8:30AM. This demonstration of anger about the ongoing lack of decent jobs serves both as a protest to our current anemic jobless recovery and as performance street theater on a massive scale. The "line" will stretch from Wall Street, along Broadway, all the way up to Times Square! Over 5000 "unemployed" are expected to participate. The Workers Unite Film Festival plans to film the whole event and bring you the back story from several of the organizers, including our friends at The Working Theater. We plan to have at least a finished short film on the event up and ready to screen - with the help of our SVA collaborators - by May 6th - at the festival.

Stay tuned! And go online to find out where you can participate in "the world's longest unemployment line."

I just wanted to add this link - because the story about how the Dems let the FAA bill slide by - making it much harder for air and rail workers to organize into unions -was a travesty. Read Theresa Moran on LaborNotes.org for a terrific analysis: http://labornotes.org/2012/02/obama-democrats-deal-setback-airline-workers

Revive the Strike and Make Labor Rights Civil Rights

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February 20, 2012

Joe Burns, in his excellent 2011 book, Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power And Transform America, details the rise to power of the American labor movement through the pain of the post-Depression 1930s, strengthened by the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 and flexing serious muscle and membership throughout the 30s and 40s.

Burns makes clear that American manufacturers, employers, the Chamber of Commerce and their right-wing GOP toadies, did everything in their power to frustrate and scuttle the NLRA right from the beginning. The only fully succeeded in seriously turning back the progressive clock in 1947 when they passed the infamous Taft-Hartley amendment to the NLRA. This revision to worker's rights to organize and the further reduction in labor union's right under the Landrum-Griffin law of 1959, set the stage for the lackluster labor movement of the 70s through to the most recent GOP led attacks on public sector unions. As Burns points out - creating a permanently exploited and underpaid working class through union destruction not only created favorable conditions for increased business owner strength, but allowed employers and their GOP funded lackeys to create in these workers a sense of envy against any remaining public sector unions. The targeting by several Republican governors of public employee unions, during a period of severe economic depression and turmoil was no mere coincidence. This effort to remove the last strong organized labor barrier to "free-market capital" in its quest to privatize schools, prisons, fire departments and almost any public service, was a long planned coordinated attack on the lives and dignity of all working people.

Scott Walker in WI, Mitch Daniels in IN and John Kasich in OH are but the latest examples of politicians heavily funded by right-wing corporate types like the Koch brothers, though many others are out there funding various Republican presidential campaigns. These entrenched members of the 1% group have never relented from their all out attack on American workers, their families and their right to live lives with a living wage and a semblance of dignity. Workers, organizers and union leaders must continue to fight back with strikes, even strikes outside the current rules of the NLRA. As Burns points out in his book, all the lessons of the last fifty years have shown that without the ability to frustrate production by employers, workers are eventually at their mercy. Despite a variety of tactics used by smart unions over the last two decades to fight back; corporate campaigns, top down organizing, workers centers and the like, the percentage of organized union members in this country continues to shrink. Strikes were historically what grabbed not only the public's imagination, but changed the balance of power between owners and workers. Notice today how brutal police can get when Occupy Wall Street protesters even remotely appear to be utilizing some of these historically successful tactics. That is because the powers that be know when to be afraid. When mass movement get going and workers are willing to take to the streets, sit down in their factories, that is when the employer class has lost control.

We must continue efforts like recalling Walker in WI, and celebrate successful repeals of anti-worker laws in OH, but we must do more. We must insist that all workers, regardless of where they work or how many hours they work, or whether they're covered by the NLRA, must be able to organize and must be able to organize under the full protection of the law.

To this purpose we suggest that all labor rights be covered under the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and that all workers immediately receive protection from unfair labor practices, including all types of on the job intimidation including the threat of termination. Putting the Civil Rights laws into true effect has taken a very long time and they still require enforcement everyday, but they are certainly far ahead of where they were in 1965. Penalties and fines for breaking civil rights laws are far harsher and more serious than almost any employer prohibition under the NLRA. We must allow every single worker the  inalienable right to free association with their fellow workers for purposes of reclaiming a dignified and just working life. They then could organize into existing union structures - as the successful NY Taxi Workers Alliance have done, or seek to form completely new and forward looking forms of worker unity.

This is the time for positive change - this is the real change we can believe in - as workers, as organizers, members of a fair and just society. As Joe Burns quotes socialist leader Eugene Debs,

Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia....but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known..."

Our union movement is on the threshold of a major choice, one where the tactics of the last thirty years must be dramatically evolved to confront a vicious and well-funded enemy. I hope the choices for the future are forceful, pragmatic, powerful and fully engaged. Let me know what you think.

While Recall of Scott Walker in WI moves forward, Workers need to Organize and Mobilize for their Rights.

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February 20, 2012

The news out of Madison, WI is reassuring so far. A Dane County Circuit Court Judge, Richard Niess ruled that there would be no further extensions beyond the already 30 day extension granted for the GOP forces supporting the Governor to challenge the validity of over a million signatures collected by the recall campaign forces last year. Early vetting of the signatures by pro- Walker forces have turned up no more than 10% to 20% of the already 330,000 counted signatures as worthy for challenge. Since the required number of signatures is 540,208, Judge Niess ruled it would be impossible to frustrate the will of the people who signed on to the recall and certainly not by the February 23rd deadline.

Though this campaign to recall the viciously anti-labor, anti-democracy Walker is not remotely a done deal, at least the will of the people so far will go forward. All labor, worker, student, progressive groups across WI will need our support and backing to send this clown packing. The infamous Koch brothers, who have pledged to spend tens of millions of dollars to defeat President Obama, have made it quite clear that Scott Walker is their boy and they will cover Wi air waves with anti-labor, anti-teacher and and progressive lies in an effort to frustrate the will of the majority of hard-working WI voters.

But whatever the outcome of this campaign, which we naturally hope recalls Walker and four other GOP State Senators, workers and labor groups across the country need to become more proactive in how we retake our voice and power in this country; not look to the forces of reaction and corruption to make such hostile and egregious moves as to motivate WI style recall campaigns in response - empowering as they might be.

 

Why Shouldn't Housekeepers Make $60,000 Per Year?

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February 15, 2012 - Thanks to Nathan Newman for this excellent article from the Huffington Post - link is below.

Last week the NYC hotel workers union in and management came to an agreement that would lead to housekeepers in major hotels making $60,000 a year by the end of the seven year contract. That's a 30% increase over their current $46,000. pay scale. Both of these numbers are way above the pay for housekeepers in most all hotel chains across the country except in highly unionized areas, like Las Vegas, LA, Chicago. In fact - in many high end resorts in the Caribbean, housekeepers depend upon your daily tips to supplement an almost slave labor level of pay. Remember that on your way to your winter vacation.

Most level-headed commentators and even NYC's Daily News applauded the victory - calling it "the kind of labor relations that should be more widespread."  As Nathan Newman points out in his brilliant piece - it is exactly these types of union victories and these types of union living wages that create the new middle class, that solidify gains made in job sectors that cannot be moved overseas by rapacious transnational conglomerates.

So of course - Fixxed news led the charge to denounce "the nightmare," of having decently paid housekeepers. As Newman points out - this despicable criticism was being spewed by infotainment commentators making five to ten times that level of pay.

Read the whole article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-newman/why-shouldnt-housekeepers_b_1277036.html

Inspectors Descend (Finally!) on IPad Factories Suspected of Worker Abuse

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February 15, 2012 - off the Reuters newswire by By Terril Yue Jones via huffington post

Representatives of the Fair Labor Association - FLA, formed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 to help reduce sweatshop conditions around the world came to visit factories manufacturing the Apple IPad, including Foxconn.

Foxconn was one of the facilities where 270 workers had threatened to commit suicide after their lunch break a few weeks ago, due to harsh conditions and long hours in the plant. The FLA inspectors, who said they were not there at the request of Apple - were filing their notes on Apple's IPad. The Executive board of FLA includes executives from sneaker companies, Nike and Adidas.

While recent documentaries on Foxconn and the production of high tech gadgets like the IPad have underscored high pressure working conditions at these plants, with workers being forced to go almost 12-14 hours a day, seven days a week - forced to live in crowded dorms and live under almost military like discipline, the FLA inspectors reported they were finding "tranquil conditions at the plants," and surmised that mass suicide by workers was actually rooted in "coming from rural areas into an industrial lifestyle, that's quite a shock to these young workers."  In other words - we're homesick - so let's commit suicide?

Read the whole story here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/15/foxconn-working-conditions_n_1278968.htm

McRomney Sad that Autoworker Retirees have Healthcare while Millionaire Bondholders Took a Bath

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February 14, 2012

In an astounding op-ed piece appearing under the strange title, "The Son of Detroit," McRomney continues on a strangely self-defeating path of saying he is one with the local folks - Michigan residents - while dissing the very recovery that has saved their state from total collapse. Who the heck is running his campaign? Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell? Thank goodness for small favors!

The Huffington Post details the strange twists and turns of his basically anti-worker, anti-retiree screed - which clearly suggests it would have been far better for Chrysler bond-holders to have fully collected their higher share of a bankruptcy payout - while canceling the health care for nearly half a million UAW retirees. By constantly using terms like "union bosses," McRomney continues to distort the relationships between workers and their union brothers and sisters. Imagine how great those UAW retirees would feel without their union's determined efforts to save their long negotiated and promised health care? Not so great I'd suspect.

McRomney both argues for and against "managed bankruptcy," the process whereby an ailing company goes into bankruptcy protection while trying to reorganize. In the case of Detroit and the whole auto industry - President Obama did something brave and visionary - which saved this industry from complete collapse. Private enterprise did not step in - though they were offered many chances to do exactly that. The taxpayers and the federal government were the only ones able to save this industry on the brink of disaster and the further loss of millions of jobs in collateral damage from the fallout of the automaker's collapse. A Republican like McRomney in the White House means disaster for working people - plain and simple.

So Romney had to be very specific in his piece for the Detroit News about why he's up in arms about the managed bankruptcy he urged and the overall outcome he applauded. It all boils down to a class argument. He's angry that "secured creditors" had to take a haircut, while the workers under union contract did not lose their pensions or health care benefits. Non-union workers did lose in the deal, which to my mind is a good argument for unionization. If Romney had his way, no one's pensions or insurance would have survived. (Romney glosses over this, because the voguish thing to do these days is to get one group of have-nots riled up and angry at another group of the same -- see also: Wisconsin.)

As Wheeler points out, though, the idea underpinning Romney's op-ed amounts to a "stick up for the one percent" argument:

He’s complaining, of course, that VEBA (the trust fund run by professionals that allowed the auto companies to spin off contractual obligations–retiree healthcare–to the unions) got a stake in Chrysler while Chrysler’s secured creditors took a haircut.
So, in part, he’s basically complaining that the bailout preserved the health care a bunch of 55+ year old blue collar workers were promised. He’s pissed they got to keep their health care.
He’s also complaining that banks took a haircut, as would happen in any managed bankruptcy.
But it’s more than that. He’s complaining that a bunch of banks that themselves had been bailed out had to take a haircut. He’s complaining, for example, that JP Morgan Chase, Chrysler’s largest creditor at the time and the recipient, itself, of $68.6B in bailout loans, had to take a haircut on $2B in loans to Chrysler.
Romney now demands that "the Obama administration needs to act now to divest itself of its ownership position in GM." But elsewhere in the piece, he argues that the "shares need to be sold in a responsible fashion and the proceeds turned over to the nation's taxpayers." These two demands are incongruous. Per Justin Hyde, at Motoramic:

If the Obama administration sold its 500 million shares in GM today, it would lose at least $14 billion. GM shares have struggled even as the company reported strong profits, in part over concerns about an underfunded pension plan. If GM shores up its pension costs, its shares could rise — although they would need to nearly double before the government broke even.
There's ample factual reasons to criticize the bankruptcies — from the treatment of Delphi's retirees and GM's unsecured bond-holders to the advantages GM, Chrysler and Chrysler's new parent Fiat gained over Ford. But doing so requires acknowledging that Obama's decisions, including his call to save Chrysler when some advisors were ready to let it go, were mostly right: GM and Chrysler came out stronger and leaner, keeping jobs in the country that would have disappeared if they'd gone out of existence.
And Romney is the candidate who understands the economy and finance and how jobs are created? Compared to that argument, his "son of Detroit" label actually seems like less of a stretch.
To read the whole article go here:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/14/mitt-romney-detroit-news_n_1277229.html?ref=elections-2012

Democratic Senators Wimp Out for Labor on FAA Bill

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February 7, 2012

Nearly 30 Democratic Senators, many of whom have received serious amounts of financial and logistical support from organized labor, voted yesterday to accept the nasty anti-union FAA reorganization bill passed forward by the GOP controlled House.

One of the most controversial parts of the bill would change accepted labor law for rail and airline workers - that would count anyone who did not vote in a union election as voting against the union. This is one of the oldest employer scams in the book and the powerful airline industry - though quick to seek shelter in the bankruptcy courts - seems to have money to burn to buy votes to pass this stinker in Congress. Make no mistake - this vote had one beneficiary - three huge airline conglomerates. The new law would raise the threshold for signatures required to get a union election from 35% of those employed - to 50%. 

A letter signed by 19 labor groups slammed Democrats for 

"Rewarding the house Republican Leadership's desire to rewrite decades of long standing labor law in a flash by inserting an unrelated and controversial labor provision in a much needed aviation safety bill, without notice, hearing or debate - this sets an extremely dangerous precedent." From a letter drafted by The CWA.

Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, voted against the revised bill, saying it served only the interests of airline companies, while further attacking the rights of middle-class workers.

It's time to stop sending so much of workers cash to politicians who are going to sell us out down the road!

More funds for outreach, organizing and labor/worker media!

Read more at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/06/senate-passes-faa-bill_n_1258430.html

Also, Bill Maher has something fun to say:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/07/bill-maher-new-rule-for-american-airlines_n_1258774.html

American Airlines Gives the Finger to its Employees. The PBGC Says Not So Fast.

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February 4, 2012

American Airlines, with over $4 billion in cash on hand, has pulled the same tired trick of many airlines and corporations over the last decade by trying to shed its employee and pension obligations to cover for years of gross mismanagement. Despite rising fees across the board for all airlines and give-backs from all unions involved with American - it is never enough for those at the top. When you compare decent unionized airline wages to the slave level compensation paid to non-union regional airline employees - in the range of $80 for a twelve hour shift (since travel time to and from the flying hub is not considered work time), the big three can't help but use any trick in the book to dump their contractual obligations to organized union employees. Bankruptcy, especially a planned effort like American's, allows the company to shed pensions, union employees, in fact make almost any move it wants and can convince a bankruptcy judge to be necessary for their survival. Since many of these judges come from pro-business backgrounds - this has not been much of a struggle.

In this particular case American has paid but $6.5 million of a $91 million bill towards its employees defined benefit plans. American claims this is a perfectly legitimate payment considering the circumstances. As for the $4 billion cash on hand? Seems this is needed for "restructuring," whatever the heck that means.

The good news here is that the Obama Administration has a very savvy head of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation - PBGC - which makes sure that workers who were promised pensions by an established contract - should get as much of those pensions before the greedy 1%ers slink off into the night with those retirees' hard earned savings. Joshua Gotbaum - son of famed NYC union leader Victor Gotbaum and a real powerhouse in his own right - has already slapped liens on $91 million of AA's Latin American operations. Those assets - this is so great! - are outside the protection of American's U.S. bankruptcy filing. So finally, FINALLY! somebody in our elected government is telling these type of sleazy corporate shysters that they will not get a free pass in their middle-class destroying, family destroying efforts. It's about time.

Read more about it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/business/pension-agency-pressures-american-airlines.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=PBGC&st=cse

McRomney Sees No Problems

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February 3, 2012

The presidential candidate closest to a fast food sandwich, stuffed with an enormous amount attractive though, empty, valueless content, cares about some of you - just not those of you who are too damn poor to care about. He knows his wealthy friends are okay - he sees them on that cash dumping line outside that "private bank" in the Cayman Islands. That's where those from country club backgrounds jet to park their excess cash earned by destroying the decent American jobs of that "95% of the middle class," that McRomney is suddenly concerned about. The poor folks though? You're living large on the government dole - so live it up now free loaders! McRomney has some special plans for you come election day. Lying his way from one network interview to another was quite the spectacle for the new GOP front runner. 

Paul Krugman's take on this phenomenon of a major party candidate actually saying such inane things on national television is required reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/opinion/krugman-romney-isnt-concerned.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

The Minimum Wage Needs a Hike Right Now

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February 1, 2012

Sheldon Silver, Democratic Majority Leader of the NY State Assembly might be hearing those chants from OWS and the 99% around the country. The Speaker has proposed to raise the basic minimum wage to at least $8.50 and hour, which would gross out to $17,000.00 per year.

Mayor Bloomberg, who likely considers $17,000 light for his pocket bill fold - at first supported the bill - then appeared to backtrack, because of course we all know that in NY State $17,000 is so much cash that one might do something crazy after paying for rent, food, insurances of every type, transportation costs....

The Mayor "conceptually supports" the bill, but worries that NY State might become uncompetitive with such a wealthy pay scale for low wage working folks and that teenagers, who of course apparently still deserve to be treated like slave labor - should not get the ax for being next in line to ride the $8.50 gravy train.

Where are we as a society, where you cannot rent a studio apartment in Manhattan for under roughly $1700 a month, that $8.50 an hour should be anything but too ridiculously low! Fight for a living wage! $10 an hour is the minimum a working person should get for selling their labor to an employer.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/30/new-york-minimum-wage-assembly-speaker-sheldon-silver_n_1242773.html

And the excellent site of The Living Wage Campaign in NY: http://www.livingwagenyc.org/