In These Times

A C-141 Starlifter leaves a contrail over Antarctica. Pratt & Whitney manufacture the aircraft's engine, along with a variety of other engines under military and commercial contracts.   (Photo courtesy of Karl Dickman via Wikipedia)

By Emily Udell

Machinists at two Connecticut airplane engine repair facilities won a major battle in their fight to prevent the employers from moving their jobs to the state of Georgia and Asia. A U.S. District Court judge issued an order preventing aerospace company Pratt & Whitney from closing two plants and moving 1,000 jobs out of the state.

As part of the union’s collective bargaining agreement, the engine manufacturer was required to make “every reasonable effort” to keep the jobs where they were.

Late last week, Judge Janet C. Hall said the company did not live up to their end of the agreement and would not be allowed to move forward with plans to relocate the jobs, which it claimed it needed to do to stay competitive in a challenging aerospace market. In her 85-page conclusion, Hall wrote:

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U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) (R) speaks during a hearing on the latest unemployment figures before the Joint Economic Committee February 5 in Washington, DC. Despite the drop in unemployment, 20,000 jobs were still lost in January.   (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

By Roger Bybee

With polls about the election of GOP Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts showing that much of the public sees Obama as trying too hard to aid Wall Street rather than working families, it is absolutely imperative that Obama go on the offensive to establish that he is willing to fight for working people.

Otherwise, the Obama line about "bailing out Wall Street in order to save Main Street" will become a set of concrete overshoes for many Democrats come November. The public wants the economic crises of their families—particularly unemployment—addressed immediately.

The latest economic headlines—about a drop in unemployment from 10% to 9.7%, and signs of increased economic activity—actually conceal the underlying reality. While the official unemployment rate dropped, 20,000 jobs were lost in January. The statistical drop in joblessness was produced by many hundreds of thousands ceasing their search for work, thus producing the misleading headlines. Fully one out of six manufacturing workers remain jobless.

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By Art Levine

Congressional Democrats are sending strong signals that they want to see more leadership from the President on health care reform.

But progressive groups, Democrats and unions also haven't coalesced behind a clear strategy either to move now-stalled health care reform forward, or to convince cowed Senate Democrats to take on the sort of large-scale jobs creation programs needed for America's 27 million jobless and underemployed.

The upshot of all this, worries one knowledgeable activist: "People are bummed out about health care, and it's hard to get them revved up about it [again]. But if we don't win on health care, there isn't anything else going to be done on the progressive agenda this year."

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By Jennifer Braudaway

The first week of February saw workers' struggles spanning from East Coast to West, including:

• Workers in New Bedford, Mass. demanding local jobs for local residents.
• Day laborers in California fighting for their right to look for work.
• Action from the ongoing Hotel Workers Rising campaign in Boston.
• Police unions picketing for collective-bargaining rights at the AFL-CIO conference in Plymouth. (See video above.)
• And county workers in Michigan protesting furloughs.

Workers Demand More Jobs for Local Residents, Minorities and Women

More than a dozen protesters marched in New Bedford, Mass., last Monday to demand that city officials and developers give more jobs to local residents, minorities and women. John “Buddy” Andrade, who helped lead the march on construction sites and government buildings, called for the city to provide information on who is working at local projects. Read more here.

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By Lindsay Beyerstein

On Sunday morning, a massive explosion rocked the Kleen Energy gas power plant in Middletown, Conn. At least five workers died in the blast, which shook houses up to 10 miles away. Rescuers continue to sift through rubble in search of survivors. Dozens of people may still be trapped by debris.

Workers were trying to purge gas lines when the explosion happened, according to Middletown's deputy fire marshall. At press conference last night, Middletown Mayor Sebastian Giuliano blamed the blast on the gas purging.

Just three days before the accident, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency charged with investigating serious chemical accidents, held a public meeting to issue urgent recommendations about gas purging safety. According to the report:

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A mural celebrates the Honduran teachers union; several of its members have been killed since the coup last June.   (Photo by Victoria Cervantes)

By Kari Lydersen

The body of 29-year-old Vanessa Yamileth Zepeda, still dressed in her nurse’s scrubs and killed by a bullet, turned up in the Loarque neighborhood of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on February 4. Zepeda had young children and was a leader of the SITRAIHSS labor union (Workers Union for the Honduran Social Security Institute). She had been abducted that afternoon while leaving a union meeting.

The administration of the newly inaugurated President Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo has called Zepeda’s murder and other recent attacks common crime. But the Honduran resistance movement – mobilized since the June 2009 coup against then-president Manuel Zelaya – see it as a clear message.

Trade unionists, especially public sector workers like Zepeda, are among the strongest and largest factions making up the resistance coalition. Opposition to powerful unions was apparently among the motivations for the coup in the first place, and all the country’s major union federations are part of the resistance front.

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(Photo from www.howardzinn.org)

By Richard Greenwald

When Howard Zinn passed away on January 27, we lost a champion of the progressive movement and working people. Zinn was able to do what other academics only can dream of: reach large numbers of Americans. He became a cultural figure during the last 15 years. As the author of 20 books, through his years as a teacher, Zinn seemed a man on a mission.

Howard Zinn reminded whole generations that workers mattered. His work synthesized that of a whole generation of labor and working-class historians for a larger audience. Thousands of high-school students, college students, and just plan regular folks read his work and learned a great lesson.

His passing marks the loss of a generation of left intellectuals whose aim was to reach beyond the academy, and into the streets. I think of Studs Terkel, who passed in 2008, as another hero gone. These were men who were not careerist academics, were dedicated activists and intellectuals—they didn’t see a divide. They inspired our generation to be more than a witness and chronicler of our world. They reminded us of the power of the word.

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Former workers of Ole Ole protest outside the restaurant in Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood, on Thursday, February 4.   (Photo by Mo Williams)

By Micah Williams

CHICAGO—The lights aren't on at a swank restaurant on this city's north side, but that didn't stop a group of former employees from demanding what they say are stolen wages.

A group of 20 workers and community members took the quaint Andersonville neighborhood by surprise Thursday, with their second evening protest in front of the posh Mexican eatery Ole Ole. They announced their filing of a federal lawsuit and National Labor Review Board complaint over claims they are owed significant amounts of back pay.

As previously reported on this blog, former workers at the restaurant claim they are owed over $100,000 in lost wages, tips, and damages. In December, the restaurant narrowly averted a protest -- organized by the Chicago branch of the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), a national organization previously profiled on Working ITT -- with a last-minute agreement to negotiate with workers.

But according to organizers and workers, little came of those negotiations. On Thursday, workers filed a lawsuit demanding the workers' pay -- and protesting and leafleting in front of the now-closed restaurant.

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In yet another search for bipartisanship, Senate Democrats seem willing to abandon strong measures to create jobs in order to find enough tax breaks for businesses to appeal to Republicans. And in the eyes of progressives, there wasn't much comfort to be taken from the unemployment rate announced this week taking a slight dip downwards to 9.7 percent with 20,000 jobs lost, especially since extended unemployment insurance runs out on February 28th, unless the Senate takes immediate action.

As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka pointed out (via AFL-CIO Now blog):

We welcome the news that unemployment dropped to 9.7%, but we shed another 20,000 jobs last month, following a revised 150,000 loss in December. These numbers underscore what we have been saying all along. Working families need bigger and bolder actions—in the short, medium and long term—to create jobs in the immediate future—or we risk permanent scarring of our economy and our workforce.

Unfortunately, as the Campaign for America's Future Robert Borosage points out, we'll need at least 400,000 new jobs created each month to bring down unemployment rates to the levels they were before the recession hit.

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Renzenberger drivers celebrate the result of the NLRB election vote. Pictured above, from left to right, are Roland Bibbs, Glenda Nixon, Tim Fox, Cynthia Moton, James Hill, Ammie Dixon and Liz Rush.   (Photo by Abraham Mwaura for ueunion.org)

By Kari Lydersen

The 160 drivers who work for Renzenberger in the Chicago suburbs are among the hidden workforce that keeps Chicago’s “logistics industry” humming. These workers shuttle railroad crews among the myriad intermodal facilities and rail hubs in the city's western suburbs, where goods from across the globe arrive in massive containers and are redistributed throughout the country.

Now the drivers are the newest Chicago-area members of the Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), the independent union famous for the Republic Windows and Doors occupation. On February 1, after a hard-fought organizing drive, the workers voted by a 3-1 margin to unionize with the UE.

The drivers say they are constantly on call, working long and erratic hours often without lunch breaks. (The company’s website says they are required to have nine hours rest after 10 hours of drive-time.)

“[S]ince they’re on call all the time and they don’t get the rest they need," says UE organizer Mark Meinster, "it’s a safety issue.”

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(Illustration by Carol Simpson Productions)

By Michelle Chen

Of all the promises studding Obama's State of the Union Address, two claims stuck out: 1) we can double exports in five years, and 2) we'll get two million jobs from that.

Putting millions of Americans to work while countering the flood of cheap imports flooding our malls and garages? Is the so-called National Export Initiative a pie-in-the-sky talking point, or something workers can bank on after a generation of seeing good jobs dry up in their communities?

To trade watchdogs, Obama's export plans, coupled with his promotion of more free trade agreements, are clouded with caveats.

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Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who supports increased privatization of the Milwaukee Public System, speaks at a news conference in 2007.   (TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images)

By Roger Bybee

Milwaukee's public schools are in trouble: less than half of students who begin high school actually graduate.

But will a major dose of free-market fundamentalism applied to Milwaukee's school system overcome the effects of the same medicine that has devastated Mlilwaukee's economy?

Milwaukee's 90,000-student system has been under a sustained neoliberal bombardment. The diversion of public funding to private voucher schools has combined with an attack on the tradition of democratic decisionmaking to favor a top-down corporate model.

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