If we think of manufacturing as a source of good jobs now, it's only because working people made it that way -- angry, militant working people who united to fight the bosses and the politicians.
By David L. Wilson, Truthout
January 22, 2017
Donald Trump's well-publicized deal with the Carrier Corporation last fall was "wildly popular" with US voters, according to Politico. A survey by Politico/Morning Consult on December 1 and 2, 2016, found 60 percent of respondents viewing Trump more favorably because of the November 30 agreement, which the real estate mogul claimed would save 1,100 jobs that the air-conditioner manufacturer had been planning to move from Indiana to a facility in Mexico.
As so often is the case, reality didn't match up with the president's assertions. The actual number of jobs saved turned out to be more like 730, and the deal involved a $7 million tax break for Carrier, a brand of United Technologies Corporation. Chuck Jones, the president of the Steelworkers local at the affected plant, told The Washington Post that Trump "lied his ass off." More recent claims that Trump has already started saving US jobs are equally questionable. But Trump's duplicity is nothing new; there's a more important problem with the popularity of Trump's Carrier deal. The focus on trade and offshored jobs is distracting us from the main issue: the jobs we still have.[...]
Read the full article:
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/39102-labor-organizing-in-2017-looking-beyond-trump-s-lies-on-jobs
Showing posts with label organizing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organizing. Show all posts
Monday, January 23, 2017
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Moving Beyond Bernie Sanders' "Political Revolution"
Just as the Sanders campaign didn't arise in a vacuum, there's no reason to expect it will leave a vacuum behind it.
By David L. Wilson, Truthout
June 29, 2016
It's been an astonishing year for the US left. Issues that mainstream politicians would have declared "off the table" just 12 months ago -- free public higher education, universal health care, the $15 minimum wage, a national ban on fracking -- are now acceptable topics for public discussion. A US politician who declared himself a socialist won more than 12 million votes, and even dared to advocate equitable treatment for Palestinians.
Bernie Sanders' campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has accomplished more than most of us could have imagined a year ago. But what happens now that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are almost certain to be our "choices" in the fall?[...]
Read the full article:
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/36602-moving-beyond-bernie-sanders-political-revolution
By David L. Wilson, Truthout
June 29, 2016
It's been an astonishing year for the US left. Issues that mainstream politicians would have declared "off the table" just 12 months ago -- free public higher education, universal health care, the $15 minimum wage, a national ban on fracking -- are now acceptable topics for public discussion. A US politician who declared himself a socialist won more than 12 million votes, and even dared to advocate equitable treatment for Palestinians.
Bernie Sanders' campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has accomplished more than most of us could have imagined a year ago. But what happens now that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are almost certain to be our "choices" in the fall?[...]
Read the full article:
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/36602-moving-beyond-bernie-sanders-political-revolution
Thursday, April 21, 2016
US Left: Split, or Free at Last?
This article appeared in the July-August 1999 issue of The Socialist. I'm posting it here partly because it's no longer on line elsewhere, but also because the issues it deals with have been getting some play recently--as in this Salon piece.
Many of the article's points are wrong or dated, but some aren't as off-base as they might appear at first. The WTO demonstrations hit Seattle just six months later, and many left-liberal activists did in fact break with the Democratic Party in 2000 to support Ralph Nader. The radicalization process was reversed in response to the September 11 attacks and the lunacy of the George W. Bush administration, but it started up again with the economic crisis in 2008 and the emergence of a new generation of activists. Since then we've seen the rise of the Dreamers, of Occupy, of Fight for 15 and Black Lives Matter, all movements that have shown little interest in the Democratic Party. And while the Sanders campaign is taking place within the party, its whole basis is defiance of the Democratic leadership's neoliberal orthodoxy.
I think my piece's biggest mistake was missing the importance of mass incarceration in the Clinton years. And the biggest irony is that in 1999 Bernie Sanders voted to back the Clintons' hawkishness; he seems to have improved a lot since then. --DW
The US Left: Split, or Free at Last?
By David Wilson
In just two months of bombing Yugoslavia Bill Clinton has done what Lyndon Johnson needed three years to do with Vietnam: he has split the majority of US activists from the Democrats in a way that is unlikely to allow any reconciliation in the near future.
It's hard to believe that just six months ago many activists were streaming to the polls to "hold their noses and vote for the Democrats." Now these same activists are forming picket lines outside the offices of the "Progressive Caucus" Congress members, who form the hard core of the war party.
On Apr. 26 some 30 former supporters sat in on the Burlington offices of Rep. Bernie Sanders, self-described "independent socialist" of Vermont, to protest his support for Clinton's war. Sanders' staff called the cops; 15 activists were arrested. Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) has had to arrest even more activists--30 of his Santa Cruz constituents since May 13. In one protest, on May 22, the Coalition to Stop the Bombing of Yugoslavia protested as Farr spoke at a Democratic Central Committee Annual Awards dinner. The activists festooned the sidewalk with slogans and pictures, distributed paper "body parts" symbolizing people blown apart by NATO cluster bombs, played a tape of bombs falling in Belgrade, and serenaded Farr with a new song: "Sam Farr, weak in the cranium, bombs the Serbs with depleted uranium!" Police arrested five protesters, including a Free Radio Santa Cruz 96.3 FM reporter who was taping the action.
Getting the Monkey Off Our Backs
Many people have written sadly about the "split in the left." It is indeed a sad, even tragic thing to watch a few once-serious leftists--people with real character and intelligence--turning themselves into cogs in a war machine. But the real split is not in the left but within the ranks of left-liberals, who have finally been forced to decide which they are: left or liberal. And most have chosen the left.
There is in fact nothing tragic about this split, which finally frees activists from an alliance with the Democrats that did nothing but impede effective organizing.
Look at the actual record of the Clinton administration. Take the doctrine of "humanitarian intervention," a bit of war propaganda cooked up in the early 1990s by Establishment think tanks like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.* Its first test was the Bush-Clinton invasion of Somalia in 1992-93. The avowed goal was to feed famine victims; the result was the massacre of hundreds of Somali civilians in the streets of Mogadishu.
Next came the comparatively bloodless 1994 invasion of Haiti, ostensibly to end the criminal rule of Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras and death-squad leader Emmanuel "Toto" Constant. Both turned out to be on the CIA payroll. Cedras now lives comfortably in Panama; Constant lives in Queens, with the Clinton administration shielding him from a Haitian extradition request. The third humanitarian intervention was the NATO's brief 1995 air war in Bosnia Herzegovina, which in effect gave the international community's seal of approval to Tudjman's ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs from Croatia, legally recognized the fascist "Republika Srpska" in Bosnia, made Milosevic the "guarantor of peace" in the Balkans, and set the stage for the current war.
Understandably, the proponents of humanitarian intervention showed no interest in reviewing the records of their earlier adventures. Instead, they pushed ahead with the next intervention, recycling the rhetoric ("you can't just stand there and do nothing, we must stop the genocide, don't you care about the human tragedy?"). And now they've brought us, once more, a country bombed back to the Stone Age.
Organizing Against the Sweatshop President
Clinton's neoliberal economic agenda--NAFTA in 1993, "welfare reform" and "immigration reform" in 1996, plans to "save" Social Security, countless embargoes against developing nations, efforts to revive the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)--will prove even more destructive in the long run than his military actions.
The president is reportedly concerned about how history will remember him. Many activists are starting to see his accomplishments in terms of how many welfare recipients are forced into slave labor programs, how many undocumented immigrants are working in sweatshops, how many production jobs have moved to low-wage havens in the "Third World." When Clinton took office in 1993, about 400,000 Mexicans worked in northern Mexico's vast maquiladora zone, making $50 or less a week assembling products sold mostly in the US for the benefit of US corporations; last January the number of maquiladora employees officially passed the one million mark. History will probably remember Clinton as the sweatshop president.
Throughout the world left and grassroots organizations have been working together over the last decade to build opposition to these neoliberal economic policies. Just since the Balkan war began, the Americas have been convulsed by strikes and militant protests against IMF austerity programs, against privatization, against union-busting. In Mexico and Argentina, university and high school students organized two of the largest student strikes of the last 30 years. The Argentine strike quickly won a rollback of education cutbacks; the Mexican strike is still continuing after more than a month, with broad support from other sectors.
There are a number of reasons for the failure of activists to build this sort of resistance in the US. The main reason, of course, is that the economic crisis has yet to strike here. Although Clinton's welfare, immigration and trade policies have been a significant drag on wages, so far the effect has been not so much to hurt the majority of workers as to keep them from participating in the boom. But the left's de facto alliance with the Democrats has had an important effect on organizing. How could activists organize effectively against the neoliberal economic program when they still called neoliberal legislators "our friends in Congress," when they were still rallying to defend Sweatshop Bill from "the vast rightwing conspiracy," when they were still supporting the US's ability to intervene everywhere and anywhere it chooses?
The War Room antics in Washington have helped us kick the Democratic Party habit. Just as in 1967 and 1968, activists at last have the scary but liberating ability to act on their own. We may not use our new freedom wisely--to a large extent we failed then--but at least we have it. Now let's get down to work on some long-overdue organizing.
May 29, 1999
* See the Endowment's 1992 report, Changing Our Ways: America in the New
World, pp 50-51.
Many of the article's points are wrong or dated, but some aren't as off-base as they might appear at first. The WTO demonstrations hit Seattle just six months later, and many left-liberal activists did in fact break with the Democratic Party in 2000 to support Ralph Nader. The radicalization process was reversed in response to the September 11 attacks and the lunacy of the George W. Bush administration, but it started up again with the economic crisis in 2008 and the emergence of a new generation of activists. Since then we've seen the rise of the Dreamers, of Occupy, of Fight for 15 and Black Lives Matter, all movements that have shown little interest in the Democratic Party. And while the Sanders campaign is taking place within the party, its whole basis is defiance of the Democratic leadership's neoliberal orthodoxy.
I think my piece's biggest mistake was missing the importance of mass incarceration in the Clinton years. And the biggest irony is that in 1999 Bernie Sanders voted to back the Clintons' hawkishness; he seems to have improved a lot since then. --DW
The US Left: Split, or Free at Last?
By David Wilson
In just two months of bombing Yugoslavia Bill Clinton has done what Lyndon Johnson needed three years to do with Vietnam: he has split the majority of US activists from the Democrats in a way that is unlikely to allow any reconciliation in the near future.
It's hard to believe that just six months ago many activists were streaming to the polls to "hold their noses and vote for the Democrats." Now these same activists are forming picket lines outside the offices of the "Progressive Caucus" Congress members, who form the hard core of the war party.
On Apr. 26 some 30 former supporters sat in on the Burlington offices of Rep. Bernie Sanders, self-described "independent socialist" of Vermont, to protest his support for Clinton's war. Sanders' staff called the cops; 15 activists were arrested. Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) has had to arrest even more activists--30 of his Santa Cruz constituents since May 13. In one protest, on May 22, the Coalition to Stop the Bombing of Yugoslavia protested as Farr spoke at a Democratic Central Committee Annual Awards dinner. The activists festooned the sidewalk with slogans and pictures, distributed paper "body parts" symbolizing people blown apart by NATO cluster bombs, played a tape of bombs falling in Belgrade, and serenaded Farr with a new song: "Sam Farr, weak in the cranium, bombs the Serbs with depleted uranium!" Police arrested five protesters, including a Free Radio Santa Cruz 96.3 FM reporter who was taping the action.
Getting the Monkey Off Our Backs
Many people have written sadly about the "split in the left." It is indeed a sad, even tragic thing to watch a few once-serious leftists--people with real character and intelligence--turning themselves into cogs in a war machine. But the real split is not in the left but within the ranks of left-liberals, who have finally been forced to decide which they are: left or liberal. And most have chosen the left.
There is in fact nothing tragic about this split, which finally frees activists from an alliance with the Democrats that did nothing but impede effective organizing.
Look at the actual record of the Clinton administration. Take the doctrine of "humanitarian intervention," a bit of war propaganda cooked up in the early 1990s by Establishment think tanks like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.* Its first test was the Bush-Clinton invasion of Somalia in 1992-93. The avowed goal was to feed famine victims; the result was the massacre of hundreds of Somali civilians in the streets of Mogadishu.
Next came the comparatively bloodless 1994 invasion of Haiti, ostensibly to end the criminal rule of Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras and death-squad leader Emmanuel "Toto" Constant. Both turned out to be on the CIA payroll. Cedras now lives comfortably in Panama; Constant lives in Queens, with the Clinton administration shielding him from a Haitian extradition request. The third humanitarian intervention was the NATO's brief 1995 air war in Bosnia Herzegovina, which in effect gave the international community's seal of approval to Tudjman's ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs from Croatia, legally recognized the fascist "Republika Srpska" in Bosnia, made Milosevic the "guarantor of peace" in the Balkans, and set the stage for the current war.
Understandably, the proponents of humanitarian intervention showed no interest in reviewing the records of their earlier adventures. Instead, they pushed ahead with the next intervention, recycling the rhetoric ("you can't just stand there and do nothing, we must stop the genocide, don't you care about the human tragedy?"). And now they've brought us, once more, a country bombed back to the Stone Age.
Organizing Against the Sweatshop President
Clinton's neoliberal economic agenda--NAFTA in 1993, "welfare reform" and "immigration reform" in 1996, plans to "save" Social Security, countless embargoes against developing nations, efforts to revive the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)--will prove even more destructive in the long run than his military actions.
The president is reportedly concerned about how history will remember him. Many activists are starting to see his accomplishments in terms of how many welfare recipients are forced into slave labor programs, how many undocumented immigrants are working in sweatshops, how many production jobs have moved to low-wage havens in the "Third World." When Clinton took office in 1993, about 400,000 Mexicans worked in northern Mexico's vast maquiladora zone, making $50 or less a week assembling products sold mostly in the US for the benefit of US corporations; last January the number of maquiladora employees officially passed the one million mark. History will probably remember Clinton as the sweatshop president.
Throughout the world left and grassroots organizations have been working together over the last decade to build opposition to these neoliberal economic policies. Just since the Balkan war began, the Americas have been convulsed by strikes and militant protests against IMF austerity programs, against privatization, against union-busting. In Mexico and Argentina, university and high school students organized two of the largest student strikes of the last 30 years. The Argentine strike quickly won a rollback of education cutbacks; the Mexican strike is still continuing after more than a month, with broad support from other sectors.
There are a number of reasons for the failure of activists to build this sort of resistance in the US. The main reason, of course, is that the economic crisis has yet to strike here. Although Clinton's welfare, immigration and trade policies have been a significant drag on wages, so far the effect has been not so much to hurt the majority of workers as to keep them from participating in the boom. But the left's de facto alliance with the Democrats has had an important effect on organizing. How could activists organize effectively against the neoliberal economic program when they still called neoliberal legislators "our friends in Congress," when they were still rallying to defend Sweatshop Bill from "the vast rightwing conspiracy," when they were still supporting the US's ability to intervene everywhere and anywhere it chooses?
The War Room antics in Washington have helped us kick the Democratic Party habit. Just as in 1967 and 1968, activists at last have the scary but liberating ability to act on their own. We may not use our new freedom wisely--to a large extent we failed then--but at least we have it. Now let's get down to work on some long-overdue organizing.
May 29, 1999
* See the Endowment's 1992 report, Changing Our Ways: America in the New
World, pp 50-51.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Book Review: Learning from Latin America’s Social Movements
By David L. Wilson, Upside Down World
June 10, 2014
Clifton Ross and Marcy Rein, editors. Until the Rulers Obey: Voices from Latin American Social Movements. PM Press, 2014.
One thing most social movements have in common is a striking ability to take the experts by surprise.
At a forum in New York last year, a senior analyst from a leading DC-based progressive research group admitted that until a June 2009 coup forced former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya out of office, “Honduras wasn’t on our radar.” The analyst’s organization was one of the best sources of information on the country in the months following the coup, but before the headline-grabbing event it overlooked one of the most interesting political developments in the hemisphere.
A mass movement had grown up in Honduras over the previous decades based on militant unions, increasingly assertive organizations of indigenous and African-descended Hondurans, campesinos demanding effective agrarian reform, and rapidly growing feminist and LGBT groups. [...]
Read the full article:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4891-book-review-learning-from-latin-americas-social-movements
June 10, 2014
Clifton Ross and Marcy Rein, editors. Until the Rulers Obey: Voices from Latin American Social Movements. PM Press, 2014.
One thing most social movements have in common is a striking ability to take the experts by surprise.
At a forum in New York last year, a senior analyst from a leading DC-based progressive research group admitted that until a June 2009 coup forced former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya out of office, “Honduras wasn’t on our radar.” The analyst’s organization was one of the best sources of information on the country in the months following the coup, but before the headline-grabbing event it overlooked one of the most interesting political developments in the hemisphere.
A mass movement had grown up in Honduras over the previous decades based on militant unions, increasingly assertive organizations of indigenous and African-descended Hondurans, campesinos demanding effective agrarian reform, and rapidly growing feminist and LGBT groups. [...]
Read the full article:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4891-book-review-learning-from-latin-americas-social-movements
Friday, June 20, 2014
Statements From Haiti and Bangladesh for Left Forum 2014
[These two statements from front-line labor organizations were read at the June 1 "Global Minimum Wage" forum at this year's Left Forum conference in New York City.]
In the name of Batay Ouvriye in Haiti, we salute all the workers, laborers and militants who are taking part in the 2014 Left Forum in the US. Also, we salute this initiative, particularly because it seeks to address a fundamental question: Reform or Revolution.
In the context of the organizational construction necessary to free all workers and all humanity, we are conscious of the need for well-coordinated linkage and relationships between vanguard organizations and the working masses, and with the popular masses in general, particularly in dominated countries. For this linkage to be effective, it must also enable us at the same time to advance toward our final objective. To achieve this, we must seek at all times to build the necessary capacity to go beyond and build the capacity to transcend. And this ability must be rooted in the very nature of what we are building, in its DNA. It is this intrinsic capacity that can ensure the necessary permanent surpassing of our struggles and organizations.
This is the only way we can struggle against the revisionism that naturally develops in struggles within the realm of bourgeois democratic rights. It is the surest way to always emerge onto the advancement that is needed each time. This is a key point.
On our side, within the necessary objective of seeking to surpass and to enable the struggles of sweatshop workers in general to move beyond their initial limits (the struggle of workers all over the world against this spreading blood-sucking form of capitalism), we are working to see how a global minimum wage can be established. This could be regional at first, maybe, taking into account the many different regional “Free Trade” agreements, but always toward the objective of achieving a comprehensive international minimum wage. This way, the working class would be able to battle, with strength, with a unity it would be building within the struggle itself. The ability to do this would enable the working class to become more and more conscious of its strength and potential, to struggle for more and to naturally enable its struggles to seek new levels, surpassing their previous objectives, developing new relationships and surpassing itself. That would once again be the role of the conscious vanguard that would emerge from the working class itself, to not only take hold of this possibility but to enact it and bring it to life.
The working class is the only class capable of moving this construction beyond and through the constant surpassing of its limits, without halting.
On the flip side, it is in the US that the upheaval we are seeking can take a shape and reach a level so high that it would project at once the emancipation we are all struggling for.
These two parameters highlight the importance of this 2014 Left Forum.
In this context, we salute once again this initiative to reflect on this necessary linkage, while the representative of our political tendency is bringing to you our vision on this ensemble of issues.
Long live the struggle of the popular masses, with laborers as their pillar, under the leadership of the working class!
Stay strong in struggle, always seeking to move beyond, and we will prevail!
Batay Ouvriye, Haiti
President of the Bangladesh Trade Union Federation
May 30, 2014
In Bangladesh, the garment workers are now very much class conscious. Especially, this has increased after the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Savar, a suburb near the capital Dhaka last year, on 24th April 2013. In addition, the people of Bangladesh are also now concerned about garment workers’ conditions, like their wages, lifestyle, etc. The exception is the ruling class.
In 2013, the present Government declared wages for the garment workers through a Wage Commission. It was a farce. This commission declared the minimum basic wage for a garment worker to be 5,300 Bangladeshi Taka [BDT] (1 US dollar was equivalent to 80 BDT), where the basic wage is 3,200 BDT excluding house rent , medical allowance, transportation, education allowance, etc.
The trade unions linked with left parties demanded 8000 BDT as a total monthly wage. This is also the demand of SKOP, a organization of workers and employees. In contrast, we Bangladesh Trade Union Federation raised the demand of 18,000 BDT (where the basic wage is 10,000 BDT).
We also raised the question: on what basis did you people fix the wages. According to our calculation, one adult person needs 3200 calories per day, and according to this we can find the monthly food expenditure for a 4-member of a family in Bangladesh (especially in Dhaka) to be now around 10,000 BDT. Now we want to add house rent, transportation, medical allowance, allowance for children’s education, etc. It will be then 18,000 BDT (though house rent in the city is different from the periphery).
We have a marked difference from others. These trade union leaders have agreed on our point, but they ask: how could the garment owners give this money to the workers as wages? It is their position, and the reflection of the garment owners’ position also.
It is notable that when we were part of the state of Pakistan, they paid 155 Rupees as a minimum wage after a workers upsurge in 1969. Today it is equivalent to 18,000 BDT. This is basically the minimum real wage, not a humanitarian wage.
Many garment factory owners have not yet executed the minimum wage for workers of 5,300 BDT declared by the government. And the government is not interested in supervising this. Those who executed it, introduced new tactics. Suppose, before the wage declaration, that there were 20 workers working in a line of a factory. Now there are 15 workers. It means they terminated 5 workers, and now 15 workers are doing job which was finished before by 20. It creates pressure on the workers. It is important to mention here that the anti-labor law helps the owners.
After the mass killing of garment workers in the year of 2013 in Bangladesh, in the Rana Plaza building collapse, the Government of Bangladesh formed an investigation committee. That committee investigated, but the people of Bangladesh have not heard about their findings. But people do know that the victim’ families have not received real compensation yet—not from the government, not from the owners, and not from the foreign buyers. In addition, the factory buildings for garment production are ill-designed and life threatening.
We, the Bangladesh Trade Union Federation, are trying to build our units in garments area. We are discussing among the workers about the government, the state, and the global imperialistic and capitalistic system. We are going with political questions, which are to prepare to capture state power by a working class movement—not by the present election system but by people's political insurrection. We are also raise workers’ demands: trade union rights, 8 hours working time, appointment letters, no compulsory overtime, 6-month maternity leave with wages, etc.
The wage struggle of garments workers is not a local phenomenon—it is global. So we think it is the time to establish workers’ unity all over the world, which will enhance the working class movement throughout the world. It is our duty to expose capitalism-imperialism in front of the working class and people.
By abolishing the capitalistic-imperialistic system through people's struggle, we will enter again into socialism, a humanitarian society which will save our planet.
Statement From Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle"), Haiti
To the comrades in attendance at the Left Forum this year:In the name of Batay Ouvriye in Haiti, we salute all the workers, laborers and militants who are taking part in the 2014 Left Forum in the US. Also, we salute this initiative, particularly because it seeks to address a fundamental question: Reform or Revolution.
In the context of the organizational construction necessary to free all workers and all humanity, we are conscious of the need for well-coordinated linkage and relationships between vanguard organizations and the working masses, and with the popular masses in general, particularly in dominated countries. For this linkage to be effective, it must also enable us at the same time to advance toward our final objective. To achieve this, we must seek at all times to build the necessary capacity to go beyond and build the capacity to transcend. And this ability must be rooted in the very nature of what we are building, in its DNA. It is this intrinsic capacity that can ensure the necessary permanent surpassing of our struggles and organizations.This is the only way we can struggle against the revisionism that naturally develops in struggles within the realm of bourgeois democratic rights. It is the surest way to always emerge onto the advancement that is needed each time. This is a key point.
On our side, within the necessary objective of seeking to surpass and to enable the struggles of sweatshop workers in general to move beyond their initial limits (the struggle of workers all over the world against this spreading blood-sucking form of capitalism), we are working to see how a global minimum wage can be established. This could be regional at first, maybe, taking into account the many different regional “Free Trade” agreements, but always toward the objective of achieving a comprehensive international minimum wage. This way, the working class would be able to battle, with strength, with a unity it would be building within the struggle itself. The ability to do this would enable the working class to become more and more conscious of its strength and potential, to struggle for more and to naturally enable its struggles to seek new levels, surpassing their previous objectives, developing new relationships and surpassing itself. That would once again be the role of the conscious vanguard that would emerge from the working class itself, to not only take hold of this possibility but to enact it and bring it to life.
The working class is the only class capable of moving this construction beyond and through the constant surpassing of its limits, without halting.
On the flip side, it is in the US that the upheaval we are seeking can take a shape and reach a level so high that it would project at once the emancipation we are all struggling for.
These two parameters highlight the importance of this 2014 Left Forum.
In this context, we salute once again this initiative to reflect on this necessary linkage, while the representative of our political tendency is bringing to you our vision on this ensemble of issues.
Long live the struggle of the popular masses, with laborers as their pillar, under the leadership of the working class!
Stay strong in struggle, always seeking to move beyond, and we will prevail!
Batay Ouvriye, Haiti
The Wage Struggle of Garment Workers in Bangladesh
Statement from Faiezul Hakim,President of the Bangladesh Trade Union Federation
May 30, 2014
In 2013, the present Government declared wages for the garment workers through a Wage Commission. It was a farce. This commission declared the minimum basic wage for a garment worker to be 5,300 Bangladeshi Taka [BDT] (1 US dollar was equivalent to 80 BDT), where the basic wage is 3,200 BDT excluding house rent , medical allowance, transportation, education allowance, etc.
The trade unions linked with left parties demanded 8000 BDT as a total monthly wage. This is also the demand of SKOP, a organization of workers and employees. In contrast, we Bangladesh Trade Union Federation raised the demand of 18,000 BDT (where the basic wage is 10,000 BDT).
We also raised the question: on what basis did you people fix the wages. According to our calculation, one adult person needs 3200 calories per day, and according to this we can find the monthly food expenditure for a 4-member of a family in Bangladesh (especially in Dhaka) to be now around 10,000 BDT. Now we want to add house rent, transportation, medical allowance, allowance for children’s education, etc. It will be then 18,000 BDT (though house rent in the city is different from the periphery).
We have a marked difference from others. These trade union leaders have agreed on our point, but they ask: how could the garment owners give this money to the workers as wages? It is their position, and the reflection of the garment owners’ position also.
It is notable that when we were part of the state of Pakistan, they paid 155 Rupees as a minimum wage after a workers upsurge in 1969. Today it is equivalent to 18,000 BDT. This is basically the minimum real wage, not a humanitarian wage.
Many garment factory owners have not yet executed the minimum wage for workers of 5,300 BDT declared by the government. And the government is not interested in supervising this. Those who executed it, introduced new tactics. Suppose, before the wage declaration, that there were 20 workers working in a line of a factory. Now there are 15 workers. It means they terminated 5 workers, and now 15 workers are doing job which was finished before by 20. It creates pressure on the workers. It is important to mention here that the anti-labor law helps the owners.
After the mass killing of garment workers in the year of 2013 in Bangladesh, in the Rana Plaza building collapse, the Government of Bangladesh formed an investigation committee. That committee investigated, but the people of Bangladesh have not heard about their findings. But people do know that the victim’ families have not received real compensation yet—not from the government, not from the owners, and not from the foreign buyers. In addition, the factory buildings for garment production are ill-designed and life threatening.
We, the Bangladesh Trade Union Federation, are trying to build our units in garments area. We are discussing among the workers about the government, the state, and the global imperialistic and capitalistic system. We are going with political questions, which are to prepare to capture state power by a working class movement—not by the present election system but by people's political insurrection. We are also raise workers’ demands: trade union rights, 8 hours working time, appointment letters, no compulsory overtime, 6-month maternity leave with wages, etc.
The wage struggle of garments workers is not a local phenomenon—it is global. So we think it is the time to establish workers’ unity all over the world, which will enhance the working class movement throughout the world. It is our duty to expose capitalism-imperialism in front of the working class and people.
By abolishing the capitalistic-imperialistic system through people's struggle, we will enter again into socialism, a humanitarian society which will save our planet.
Friday, May 30, 2014
NYC, June 1: “The Global Minimum Wage Struggle,” at Left Forum
The Global Minimum Wage Struggle
Global capital’s “race to the bottom” in imposing ever-lower—even sub-survival—wages is generating resistance around the world. With a focus on the garment industry in Bangladesh and Haiti, the speakers will discuss the importance of working class internationalism. This includes not only building solidarity, but also coordination of struggles.
Panel at Left Forum
Noon - 1:50 p.m.
Sunday, June 1
Room 1.109
• David L. Wilson, Weekly News Update on the Americas
• Kiki Makandal, Batay Ouvriye Solidarity Network, One Struggle NY
• Stephanie McMillan, political cartonist, Proletarian Alternative, One Struggle FL
Recommended reading:
Stephanie McMillan: “A Garment Worker in Bangladesh Speaks Out”
Kiki Makandal: “Ten Years of UN Military Occupation of Haiti: Background and Current Effects”
Jan Makandal: “Wage Struggles: Reformist or Revolutionary?”
David L. Wilson: “Thinking Big: The Global Minimum Wage”Thursday, May 8, 2014
US Labor Activist Deported From Indonesia
By Educating for Justice
May 7, 2014
Friends and Supporters:
On Tuesday, May 6th, I was deported from Indonesia and I have been banned from traveling there for at least six months.
I was picked up by immigration officers after being tailed by intel at the May Day celebrations in Jakarta.
I was brought in for hours of questioning, my passport was confiscated and I had to report back to the immigration office for additional questioning the next day. When the investigation was complete, I was told that I was being deported and that I could not travel to Indonesia for six months with the possibility that the ban could be extended indefinitely. I do not think it is any coincidence I was picked up a day after I stood in solidarity with hundreds of workers at a demonstration at Nike’s Indonesian headquarters in Jakarta.
The powers that be may think that by taking this action they are going to silence my voice and activism on this issue. To the contrary, I am as committed now as I have ever been to telling the world about Nike’s labor abuses in Indonesia. The truth does not need a passport or a visa to be heard.
To read a detailed commentary about this event, please click the following link:
May Day Mayday Again by Terry Collins
In the coming days I will be posting my research, photos, and letters to Nike about the current situation at their Indonesian factories. You can check all this out at:
Team Sweat @ Facebook
Thank you for your continued support.
Peace,
Jim Keady, Director
Educating for Justice
Also see:
Indonesian Immigration Deports US Activist Jim Keady for Visa Violation
May 7, 2014
Friends and Supporters:
On Tuesday, May 6th, I was deported from Indonesia and I have been banned from traveling there for at least six months.
I was picked up by immigration officers after being tailed by intel at the May Day celebrations in Jakarta.
I was brought in for hours of questioning, my passport was confiscated and I had to report back to the immigration office for additional questioning the next day. When the investigation was complete, I was told that I was being deported and that I could not travel to Indonesia for six months with the possibility that the ban could be extended indefinitely. I do not think it is any coincidence I was picked up a day after I stood in solidarity with hundreds of workers at a demonstration at Nike’s Indonesian headquarters in Jakarta.
The powers that be may think that by taking this action they are going to silence my voice and activism on this issue. To the contrary, I am as committed now as I have ever been to telling the world about Nike’s labor abuses in Indonesia. The truth does not need a passport or a visa to be heard.
To read a detailed commentary about this event, please click the following link:
May Day Mayday Again by Terry Collins
In the coming days I will be posting my research, photos, and letters to Nike about the current situation at their Indonesian factories. You can check all this out at:
Team Sweat @ Facebook
Thank you for your continued support.
Peace,
Jim Keady, Director
Educating for Justice
Also see:
Indonesian Immigration Deports US Activist Jim Keady for Visa Violation
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Taking On the Fashion Industry
by David L. Wilson, MRZine
April 19, 2014
Tansy E. Hoskins. Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion. Pluto Press, 2014. 254 pages.
To say that Tansy E. Hoskins' Stitched Up deconstructs the garment industry would be a misrepresentation. What the British activist and journalist does is more like a controlled demolition, using facts and footnotes to strip away the apparel trade's decorative exterior and then to dynamite the foundations.
Hoskins' polemic begins with the title. In British usage "to stitch up" is "to swindle, to overcharge exorbitantly," according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and Hoskins' goal is to show the many ways that fashion swindles us all. Through its own media outlets and its billions of dollars in advertising, the industry creates a glittery illusion of beauty and sophistication. The reality is a $1.5 trillion industry as grimy and profit-driven as any, and the glossy pages of Vogue conceal a record of human and environmental damage we might expect from coal mining or oil drilling. [...]
Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/wilson190414.html
April 19, 2014
Tansy E. Hoskins. Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion. Pluto Press, 2014. 254 pages.
To say that Tansy E. Hoskins' Stitched Up deconstructs the garment industry would be a misrepresentation. What the British activist and journalist does is more like a controlled demolition, using facts and footnotes to strip away the apparel trade's decorative exterior and then to dynamite the foundations.
Hoskins' polemic begins with the title. In British usage "to stitch up" is "to swindle, to overcharge exorbitantly," according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and Hoskins' goal is to show the many ways that fashion swindles us all. Through its own media outlets and its billions of dollars in advertising, the industry creates a glittery illusion of beauty and sophistication. The reality is a $1.5 trillion industry as grimy and profit-driven as any, and the glossy pages of Vogue conceal a record of human and environmental damage we might expect from coal mining or oil drilling. [...]
Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/wilson190414.html
Friday, November 22, 2013
Fight For 15 Confidential
How did the biggest-ever mobilization of fast-food workers come about, and what is its endgame?
By Arun Gupta, In These Times
November 11, 2013
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU)-backed campaign to organize fast-food workers nationwide is on a roll. It’s entering its second year in the public eye, having staged four one-day strikes, culminating in a 60-city walkout on August 29. It’s a bold move by one of the nation’s largest unions to organize an unorganized private-sector workforce numbering in the millions.[...]
Read the full article:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/15826/fight_for_15_confidential
By Arun Gupta, In These Times
November 11, 2013
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU)-backed campaign to organize fast-food workers nationwide is on a roll. It’s entering its second year in the public eye, having staged four one-day strikes, culminating in a 60-city walkout on August 29. It’s a bold move by one of the nation’s largest unions to organize an unorganized private-sector workforce numbering in the millions.[...]
Read the full article:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/15826/fight_for_15_confidential
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Stand With Haitian Workers for a Living Wage!
On November 29th, after years of delay and wage theft, a minimum wage increase will be announced in Haiti. Batay Ouvriye (Workers' Struggle), an autonomous workers' organization, is mobilizing around the country to demand an increase to 500 gourdes (approximately $11.50)--the minimum for a family to survive.
The current minimum wage is only 300 gourdes (85 cents/hour), and even that is not being paid by the factories. Most receive only 200 gourdes (57 cents/hour).
Batay Ouvriye is mobilizing around the country for workers to voice their demands, what they say they actually need for a minimum wage. This takes money to travel, print thousands of flyers, host trainings and protests.
The US-based organization One Struggle has set up an indiegogo campaign to raise $3,200 to help pay for the mobilization in Haiti. To learn more and to contribute, go to:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/stand-with-haitian-workers-for-a-living-wage
For more information on the minimum wage situation, go to:
http://inthesetimes.org/working/entry/14391/7_per_day_haiti_anti-sweatshop_revival/
http://inthesetimes.com/uprising/entry/14685/surveillance_beatings_firings_how_apparel_companies_suppress_the_minimum_wa/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/16/world/americas/group-says-haitian-garment-workers-are-shortchanged-on-pay.html
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Queens 'Carwasheros' Strike to Demand Owner Recognize Union
By Stephanie West, Labor Press
October 29, 2013
New York, NY – Workers at Off-Broadway Car Wash in Queens walked off the job today to demand that the owner recognize the union. The owner has been ducking the efforts of the National Labor Relations Board to set up an election despite a government subpoena being issued.
The “carwasheros” left their posts at 42-08 80th St. in Elmhurst, at 8:30 a.m., soon after clergy, elected officials, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), community supporters and advocates from New York Communities for Change and Make the Road New York held a press conference denouncing the owner for ignoring federal regulators. [...]
Read the full article:
http://laborpress.org/sectors/union-retail/2963-queens-carwasheros-strike-to-demand-owner-recognize-union
October 29, 2013
New York, NY – Workers at Off-Broadway Car Wash in Queens walked off the job today to demand that the owner recognize the union. The owner has been ducking the efforts of the National Labor Relations Board to set up an election despite a government subpoena being issued.
The “carwasheros” left their posts at 42-08 80th St. in Elmhurst, at 8:30 a.m., soon after clergy, elected officials, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), community supporters and advocates from New York Communities for Change and Make the Road New York held a press conference denouncing the owner for ignoring federal regulators. [...]
Read the full article:
http://laborpress.org/sectors/union-retail/2963-queens-carwasheros-strike-to-demand-owner-recognize-union
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
The Wobblies — another way forward for low-wage workers?
By Chris Longenecker, Waging Nonviolence
October 4, 2013
With next to no planning and little experience with labor law or direct action, all four workers on the late-night shift at the Insomnia Cookies store in Cambridge, Mass., walked off the job on August 18, declaring themselves on strike. Fed up with inadequate wages, long shifts without a break and no benefits, they timed the strike to begin with Insomnia’s midnight rush, causing maximum financial damage to the firm. As striking Insomnia worker Jonathan Peña put it, “We don’t have anything to lose.”
Insomnia Cookies has more than 30 branches nationwide. The chain specializes in delivering cookies and milk in areas with large college-student populations. Its busiest times are between midnight and 2:45 a.m., when students have returned from a night out and are willing to pay a premium for Insomnia’s treats to be delivered to their dorm rooms. [...]
Read the full article:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/wobblies-another-way-forward-low-wage-workers/
October 4, 2013
With next to no planning and little experience with labor law or direct action, all four workers on the late-night shift at the Insomnia Cookies store in Cambridge, Mass., walked off the job on August 18, declaring themselves on strike. Fed up with inadequate wages, long shifts without a break and no benefits, they timed the strike to begin with Insomnia’s midnight rush, causing maximum financial damage to the firm. As striking Insomnia worker Jonathan Peña put it, “We don’t have anything to lose.”
Insomnia Cookies has more than 30 branches nationwide. The chain specializes in delivering cookies and milk in areas with large college-student populations. Its busiest times are between midnight and 2:45 a.m., when students have returned from a night out and are willing to pay a premium for Insomnia’s treats to be delivered to their dorm rooms. [...]
Read the full article:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/wobblies-another-way-forward-low-wage-workers/
Monday, October 7, 2013
Opportunities Present for “Labor Left” in Walmart and Fast Food Fights
By Ryan Hill, Solidarity
October 1, 2013
For the first time in many years, there are not one, but two exciting new campaigns that have great potential to put unions back on the map of public consciousness. The efforts to organize workers at Walmart as well as workers at fast food restaurants and other big box stores in cities across the US have caught the attention of millions of people who previously had little to no connection to organized labor.
In this article, I offer some thoughts on what makes these campaigns so exciting, followed by a sober assessment of the challenges that they face. I’ll close with four recommendations for radicals looking to get involved in supporting these efforts, as I believe they should.[...]
Read the full article:
http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/4006
October 1, 2013
For the first time in many years, there are not one, but two exciting new campaigns that have great potential to put unions back on the map of public consciousness. The efforts to organize workers at Walmart as well as workers at fast food restaurants and other big box stores in cities across the US have caught the attention of millions of people who previously had little to no connection to organized labor.
In this article, I offer some thoughts on what makes these campaigns so exciting, followed by a sober assessment of the challenges that they face. I’ll close with four recommendations for radicals looking to get involved in supporting these efforts, as I believe they should.[...]
Read the full article:
http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/4006
Friday, October 4, 2013
Low-wage workers, top-down unions
As large unions orchestrate dramatic actions around the plight of low-wage workers, it remains an open question what control the workers themselves will have.
By Peter Rugh, Waging Nonviolence
September 30, 2013
August 29 was a typically cool, wet summer day in downtown Seattle. “We support you!” cried the crowd of 30 or so gathered outside Specialty’s Café, their voices reverberating off the glass facades of adjacent downtown buildings. To remain open, the restaurant had been forced to call in extra staff. Six of its workers had joined the national fast-food workers’ strike that day to demand $15 per hour and a union.
The crowd in front of Specialty’s was distinctly of the type able to attend an anti-corporate demonstration in the middle of a workday — young and mostly white, trying to act as allies. Their chants were not those of workers with a grievance so much as those of outsiders seeking to connect with Speciality’s labor force inside. [...]
Read the full article:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/low-wage-workers-top-unions/
By Peter Rugh, Waging Nonviolence
September 30, 2013
August 29 was a typically cool, wet summer day in downtown Seattle. “We support you!” cried the crowd of 30 or so gathered outside Specialty’s Café, their voices reverberating off the glass facades of adjacent downtown buildings. To remain open, the restaurant had been forced to call in extra staff. Six of its workers had joined the national fast-food workers’ strike that day to demand $15 per hour and a union.
The crowd in front of Specialty’s was distinctly of the type able to attend an anti-corporate demonstration in the middle of a workday — young and mostly white, trying to act as allies. Their chants were not those of workers with a grievance so much as those of outsiders seeking to connect with Speciality’s labor force inside. [...]
Read the full article:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/low-wage-workers-top-unions/
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Walmart Workers Flash Mobm Raleigh, NC
September 5th, 2013, Raleigh, NC - As Walmart workers petition managers to reinstate employees who have been unfairly treated, a flash mob breaks out.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Standoff in the strawberry fields
By David Bacon, AlJazeera America
August 19, 2013
In July, Washington berry pickers went on strike. A week after their return, farm owners brought in H2A guest workers
BURLINGTON, Wash. — Over a tense two-week period in July, at the peak of the summer harvest season, almost 250 workers at the $6.1 million Sakuma Brothers strawberry and blueberry farm — one of the largest in Washington state — went on strike twice. Workers fought with the farm’s owners over wages, overtime pay, alleged racist treatment and conditions in their housing camp. They won concessions but lost on most of their monetary demands. With few resources left, they returned to the fields.
Sakuma Brothers Farms could afford to play hardball because it had an ace in the hole: It had been certified to bring 160 new workers from Mexico under the restrictive H2A guest-worker program. And the lower wages mandated for guest workers under U.S. immigration law proved to be the limit not just for the H2A workers but also for all the other pickers at the company. [...]
Read the full article:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/8/19/stand-off-in-thestrawberryfields.html
August 19, 2013
In July, Washington berry pickers went on strike. A week after their return, farm owners brought in H2A guest workers
BURLINGTON, Wash. — Over a tense two-week period in July, at the peak of the summer harvest season, almost 250 workers at the $6.1 million Sakuma Brothers strawberry and blueberry farm — one of the largest in Washington state — went on strike twice. Workers fought with the farm’s owners over wages, overtime pay, alleged racist treatment and conditions in their housing camp. They won concessions but lost on most of their monetary demands. With few resources left, they returned to the fields.
Sakuma Brothers Farms could afford to play hardball because it had an ace in the hole: It had been certified to bring 160 new workers from Mexico under the restrictive H2A guest-worker program. And the lower wages mandated for guest workers under U.S. immigration law proved to be the limit not just for the H2A workers but also for all the other pickers at the company. [...]
Read the full article:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/8/19/stand-off-in-thestrawberryfields.html
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
A Grocery Boycott Resumes in Brooklyn
by David L. Wilson, Grassroots Solidarity
August 14, 2013
[This article is also available at: http://www.indypendent.org/2013/08/26/grocery-boycott-resumes-brooklyn]
“Welcome back,” community organizer Lucas Sánchez called out to some 35 demonstrators in front of a small supermarket in Brooklyn’s Kensington neighborhood the afternoon of August 10. “It’s as if we never left,” he added with a smile.
The Saturday rally, announced just two days before, marked the resumption of a consumer boycott at the Golden Farm grocery store in support of Latino produce workers currently in negotiations with the shop’s owner, Sonny Kim. Kensington residents and local labor rights activists started the boycott one year earlier, in August 2012, but suspended it last March at the urging of the workers’ union, Local 338 RWDSU/UFCW, in the hope that this would advance the contract talks.
“We lifted the boycott so Mr. Kim could negotiate in good faith,” Sánchez, who works for the advocacy organization New York Communities for Change (NYCC), told the group of supporters, which included the area’s City Council member, Brad Lander, and a Brooklyn state senator, Eric Adams. But after five months management is still refusing to budge on demands for higher pay, job security, and paid sick days, holidays and vacations, according to the union.
This time the consumer action will continue until the workers have won their contract, Occupy Kensington member Eleanor Rodgers announced as the crowd applauded. “Sonny Kim needs to understand that last time, when we suspended the boycott,” she said, “that was his last chance.”
The Golden Farm struggle may just involve a handful of workers in an out-of-the-way Brooklyn neighborhood, but speaker after speaker stressed that it was part of a large and growing movement of low-wage workers. “Forty-four grocery stores are organizing in Brooklyn,” Sánchez said. “Hundreds of car wash workers are organizing around the city, and thousands of fast food workers are organizing around the country. People are saying it’s time to rise up.”
For decades U.S. labor unions tended to view these workers as too difficult to organize: most are employed in small, isolated shops, and many are vulnerable to employer threats because of problems with their immigration status. Council member Lander commended the courage and dedication of the Golden Farm workers, immigrants who started organizing themselves in December 2010. Since then they have won a raise—to minimum wage—and a back-pay settlement; in September 2012 their efforts resulted in the National Labor Relations Board’s certification of Local 338 as their union.
The struggle gained special emotional resonance when 34-year-old Golden Farm worker and union supporter Félix Trinidad died of stomach cancer in July 2012; unable to get paid sick leave, he had continued to work 12-hour shifts while undergoing chemotherapy.
But Senator Adams emphasized that despite their admirable courage, low-wage workers need the sort of support the Golden Farm workers have been getting in Kensington.
Occupy Kensington’s Rodgers, who has lived in the neighborhood for six years, estimates that the earlier seven-month boycott cut Sonny Kim’s business by about 30%. Was she optimistic about prospects for restarting the campaign? “I’m not just optimistic, I’m absolutely certain we can do it,” she said. But she was less certain that they would win. For one thing, Rodgers suspects that Kim has been stalling as the September 20 anniversary of the union’s certification approaches. After that management can push for a decertification vote.
Kensington residents are mostly working-class or lower-middle-class. Many are immigrants, with no one ethnic or social group predominating: the awning at Golden Farm advertises “Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Turkish, Israeli, kosher, organic, gourmet food.” There’s plenty of sympathy for the Latino workers, who live in the community. But the supermarket’s low prices, variety of food types, and convenient location near the subway on Church Avenue make it attractive to consumers. As in many New York grocery stores, the cashiers, the workers that shoppers interact with most, are not Latino and are less likely to support the union.
Rodgers, herself an immigrant from Northern Ireland, says Kim has tried to play on potential divisions, depicting the boycott as the work of “outsiders.” At the rally she called for neighborhood people to staff the picket lines on weekend afternoons and in the evenings on weekdays. “We aren’t NYCC, we aren’t the union,” she insisted. “We live here.”
For all the difficulties they face, labor rights supporters were in good spirits as they started the first picket line of the renewed boycott. Drivers on Church Avenue regularly honked in support when they saw the picketers’ signs.
Laura Castro, a schoolteacher and one of the Kensington residents on the line, admitted that the neighborhood was polarized over the boycott but said she was hopeful that most people would back the workers. She’d observed a change in the political climate over the last few years, she explained. “It’s surprising how much feeling there is out in the community about depressed wages, about unions being dismantled. The big media aren’t telling us about this.”
David L. Wilson is co-author, with Jane Guskin, of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers, Monthly Review Press, July 2007. He also co-edits Weekly News Update on the Americas, a summary of news from Latin America and the Caribbean.
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Viva la Huelga! The Agricultural Strike at Sakuma Brothers Farms and the Tradition of Oaxacan Resistance
By Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, MRzine
July 25, 2013
Strike Heats Up as Over 200 Immigrant Workers Are Threatened with Mass Firing
July 24, 2013
As workers walked past fields of strawberries and blueberries into a negotiation meeting this morning with Sakuma Brothers Farms, Inc. management, they were told to accept management's terms or lose their jobs. This threat comes amidst a heated strike of over 200 immigrant farm workers at the Burlington, WA farm which is just north of Seattle. It is the second strike the workers initiated in the last two weeks over a list of demands over wages, dignity, and respect.
The strike started after the firing of farm worker Federico Lopez on July 10th. Lopez and his coworkers believed he was targeted for bringing up grievances with his superiors. Some of the workers were listening to an interview of Rosalinda Guillen on a Spanish-language radio show on a local radio station. They decided that they wanted her to assist them with their struggle at Sakuma Brothers Farms. [...]
Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/dunn250713.html
July 25, 2013
Strike Heats Up as Over 200 Immigrant Workers Are Threatened with Mass Firing
July 24, 2013
As workers walked past fields of strawberries and blueberries into a negotiation meeting this morning with Sakuma Brothers Farms, Inc. management, they were told to accept management's terms or lose their jobs. This threat comes amidst a heated strike of over 200 immigrant farm workers at the Burlington, WA farm which is just north of Seattle. It is the second strike the workers initiated in the last two weeks over a list of demands over wages, dignity, and respect.
The strike started after the firing of farm worker Federico Lopez on July 10th. Lopez and his coworkers believed he was targeted for bringing up grievances with his superiors. Some of the workers were listening to an interview of Rosalinda Guillen on a Spanish-language radio show on a local radio station. They decided that they wanted her to assist them with their struggle at Sakuma Brothers Farms. [...]
Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/dunn250713.html
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Hot and Crusty film featured in the New York Times
By Laura Gottesdiener, Waging Nonviolence
July 16, 2013
As the debate over immigration reform continues in Washington, the victory of one group of mostly unauthorized workers is now in the national spotlight — demonstrating a direct-action path that unauthorized workers across the country could adopt to win rights both at work and in broader society.
Robin Blotnick and Rachel Lears’ film “The Hand that Feeds” — featured today in the New York Times Op-Docs series — chronicles the year-long struggle of Mahoma López and his co-workers at Hot and Crusty, a bakery on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. [...]
Read the full article:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/2013/07/hot-and-crusty-struggle-in-national-spotlight/
Watch the NY Times documentary:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/opinion/occupy-bakery.html
Visit the documentary's website:
http://thehandthatfeedsfilm.com/news
July 16, 2013
As the debate over immigration reform continues in Washington, the victory of one group of mostly unauthorized workers is now in the national spotlight — demonstrating a direct-action path that unauthorized workers across the country could adopt to win rights both at work and in broader society.
Robin Blotnick and Rachel Lears’ film “The Hand that Feeds” — featured today in the New York Times Op-Docs series — chronicles the year-long struggle of Mahoma López and his co-workers at Hot and Crusty, a bakery on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. [...]
Read the full article:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/2013/07/hot-and-crusty-struggle-in-national-spotlight/
Watch the NY Times documentary:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/opinion/occupy-bakery.html
Visit the documentary's website:
http://thehandthatfeedsfilm.com/news
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Immigration Reform: The View From Below
by David L. Wilson, Upside Down World
July 8, 2013
Washington’s latest effort at comprehensive immigration reform, S.744, sailed through the Senate on June 27 by a vote of 68 to 32. The “historic session” followed weeks of heavy media coverage. We learned about the maneuvers of the Senate’s bipartisan Gang of Eight; about the counter-moves of the Tea Party faction; about the various deals cooked up by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, the defense contractors, and the magnates of Silicon Valley. We learned about what all the major players thought about border security, the path to citizenship, the need for immigrants “to wait their turn in line,” and the importance of “fixing a broken system.” And now the media coverage is moving on to the legislative deal making in the House of Representatives.
As usual, the one thing the media aren’t covering is what the immigrants themselves think about immigration reform.
This was a central issue at a meeting that some 40 to 45 activists--some of them visiting New York from Mexico and Central America--held in the basement of a mid-Manhattan church on the evening of May 23.[...]
Read the full article:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4367-immigration-reform-the-view-from-below
July 8, 2013
Washington’s latest effort at comprehensive immigration reform, S.744, sailed through the Senate on June 27 by a vote of 68 to 32. The “historic session” followed weeks of heavy media coverage. We learned about the maneuvers of the Senate’s bipartisan Gang of Eight; about the counter-moves of the Tea Party faction; about the various deals cooked up by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, the defense contractors, and the magnates of Silicon Valley. We learned about what all the major players thought about border security, the path to citizenship, the need for immigrants “to wait their turn in line,” and the importance of “fixing a broken system.” And now the media coverage is moving on to the legislative deal making in the House of Representatives.
As usual, the one thing the media aren’t covering is what the immigrants themselves think about immigration reform.
This was a central issue at a meeting that some 40 to 45 activists--some of them visiting New York from Mexico and Central America--held in the basement of a mid-Manhattan church on the evening of May 23.[...]
Read the full article:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4367-immigration-reform-the-view-from-below
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