Tag: unions

Last night on the PBS News Hour they had a discussion with the new AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka

On a separate page from the transcript and video/audio links of the discussion they have a short video of a round-table meeting of the lobbyist of the AFL-CIO with Trumka talkin ‘bluedogs’ and ‘public option’.

Inside the AFL-CIO’s Health Care Lobbying Efforts

[Royal Mail: battle for us all Royal Mail: battle for us all]

Original article, subheaded AFL-CIO names new president, by Jerry White via World Socialist Web Site:

On Wednesday, John Sweeney, who has led the AFL-CIO since 1995, stepped down and was succeeded by his long-time lieutenant, Richard Trumka, who ran unopposed and was elected by delegates at the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh.

I have some good news.  This is a story of how worker activism along with the help of Democratic officeholders can save jobs.  

First, my title.   It’s title is derived from the fact that one of Workers United’s predecessor unions at Hartmarx was the International Ladies Garment Worker’s Union.   Looks like the union label will stay on the President’s suits.  (President Obama wore a Hartmarx suit at the Innaugaration, I believe.)

The 1978 ad:

Two weeks ago workers voted to hold a sit-in action at the factores of the company that makes Obama’s suits (Hartmarx) if Well Fargo sold it to a company that would close the plants and send the jobs overseas.  This week, the bidder approved as the “stalking horse” bidder in bankruptcy is a good company who will keep jobs in Amerirca and honor the union contracts.

More, after the fold.

My work rules for working hours need to apply to all the globe’s working people. Unless you have interest income and or dividend income you can live on, you’re a worker.  Managers are workers, if they are useful managers. Most senior managers, from what I’ve seen in the last 3 decades, are most focused with rigging the system to take a huge cut of the pie before anyone else gets a fair share of the pie they helped create. Just about all of us are working stiffs.

I’ve got no problem with competition.  However, competition without fair rules is NOT fair competition.  When the people with money make the workers’ rules about competition, the competition ain’t fair and ONLY benefits those with the money. The winners of the daily foot races of productivity get false promises and pennies, while the senior management pockets the surplus. For each inventor of a google or band aids who gets their deserved rewards, there are how many trumps, gates, hiltons, bushes … who are ushered into all the right doors with all the right opportunities?

Some of you may remember Tennessee Ernie Ford’s old song. I do. When I was a kid we spent summers in eastern Kentucky with my Aunt and grandparents, Dad sometimes took us out to an old strip mine to shoot tin cans with his pearl-handled six shooters, and learn some history while we were at it. Back in the day, he told us, the coal barons had a clever scheme to enslave the local populations who worked to dig out the coal from its natural habitat.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

The Times Record Herald reports that the New York Prison Guards Union has managed to kill a performance of an inmate musical production.  The prisoners, it seems, wrote a play, a musical to be exact, produced it, directed it, and act, sing and dance in it.  They were going to show it to prisoners at another, nearby prison.

Why has the production been canceled?  Because the guards’ union is mad at the Governor because of closings, supposedly for budgetary reasons, of work release centers in which union member guards are employed.  Not content to fight the Governor directly, not content to picket the Governor and the legislature, the Union has stepped in to stop the prisoners’ showing their play to other prisoners by threatening to picket the performance:

State prison officials have lowered the curtain on an inmate theatrical performance.

A troupe of 18 convicted murderers, robbers and other felons at Woodbourne Correctional Facility had been scheduled to perform an original play Wednesday at Eastern Correctional Facility in Ellenville.

But the state Department of Correctional Services has canceled the show because union workers threatened to picket.

“The commissioner does not want to jeopardize the program or the people in it by putting them in the middle of a statewide labor issue,” said DOCS spokesman Erik Kriss.

I think we are seeing a movement here.  In the last couple days, I’ve written about the Hartmarx sit-in votes in Illinois and the pressure on Wells Fargo to choose a bidder for Hartmarx that will keep the compnay open.  The Illinois plant voted for a sit-in.  Now Rochester has followed.

ROCHESTER, NY, MAY 13-Determined to protect good, U.S. manufacturing jobs, more than 450 Hickey-Freeman workers unanimously voted yesterday to stage a sit-in if Wells Fargo & Co., their employer’s main creditor and a recipient of a $25 billion taxpayer bailout, liquidates company assets. Rochester workers are joining with employees of Hartmarx, Hickey-Freeman’s parent company, who voted earlier in the week to stage a sit-in if their plants were shuttered.

Rochester Hickey-Freeman Workers Vote to Stage Sit-In if Bailed-Out Bank Attempts to Close Company

More, after the fold.

Also on Dkos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

(Orange version of this diary.)

The immigrant labor movement in this country has come full circle. The immigrants are from different countries and the jobs have changed some but the issues are the same as they ever were.

On a sunny April day, I paid a visit to my favorite bakery in San Franciso, the Arizmendi Bakery. Amongst the the beautiful baguettes and the sumptuous scones, I saw a sign stating that the bakery would be closed on May 1 to celebrate Labor Day – the same day it is celebrated in Europe and many other places.

Since Arizmendi Bakery is a worker owned cooperative it didn’t surprise me that they would chose the May 1 observation. (I always figured the US had a different date for cold-war reasons). It turns out there’s an important reason why the world celebrates Labor Day is on May 1:

It’s to commemorate a hard fought, yet forgotten victory for American and immigrant workers that took place right here in the United States: the May 1, 1886 Haymarket Protest in Chicago.

So why doesn’t the US celebrate this?

I don’t know whether you watched that first video.  I don’t even know whether you are old enough to remember when it ran on tv the first time.

I remember it.

I remember when products that Americans bought were actually “Made in the U.S.A.”

But more of them were “Made in Japan.”

Now it’s “Made in China/Korea/Indonesia/Vietnam.”

Look:  All those countries deserve good economies, and I’m all in favor of their building up their economies and exporting whatever they can..  There is nothing wrong with that.

But the GOP has done everything in their power since 1980 to ensure that the supposedly “free” market + globalization would screw the middle class and further enrich the richest among us.

This is not a bug, this is a feature.

Globalization and Trickle Down have one thing in common:

PISS ON YOU

Pony Party is an Open Thread.  Please not to rec the party.  Thank you.