In These Times

By Mike Elk

Almost a year ago, President Obama imposed tariffs on Chinese tire Imports.Between 2004 and 2008, Chinese tires imported to the U.S. at below-market prices increased by more than 300%. The resulting illegal dumping of Chinese tires resulted in the loss of 8,000 tire workers jobs in the United States.

A new study by the Alliance for American Manufacturing has shown that  Obama's enforcement of the trade laws has actually led to an increase in employment and tire production. The study, based on Rubber Manufacturing Association data, shows that U.S. tire factory production has gone up over 15 percent, or by more than 10 million tires. Nearly 500 new workers have been hired in the tire industry and overtime has gone up at Goodyear plants by 20% and at Michelin plants by 15%.

"There is a simple lesson here. Enforcing trade laws works" said Alliance for American Manufacturing Director Scott Paul, in a statement responding to critics who said the tire tariffs wouldn't help the American economy.

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By Kari Lydersen

The Resistance Movement, which marched on the anniversary of the coup June 28, is calling for a national general strike in Honduras.   (Photo by Kari Lydersen)

Honduran trade unionists and other sectors of the resistance movement have called for a national general strike to oppose a proposed law that would gut labor rights, a push for privatization and an illegally low minimum wage, along with other crises that have developed since the June 2009 coup and current president Porfirio Lobo Sosa’s January inauguration.

The general strike has a proud history in Honduras, with the labor rights and union powers that Hondurans do enjoy largely stemming from an historic 1954 general strike involving tens of thousands of workers in the banana, mining, textile, brewery, tobacco, shipping and other sectors. Last summer, several weeks after the coup, the resistance movement launched a two-day general strike that largely paralyzed the country.

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By Michelle Chen

When New York cabbie Ahmed Sharif spread his arms before news reporters and displayed the deep wounds running across his neck and arms, the scars seemed like a testament to the hatred that has ripped through the city in recent weeks.

Appearing at a press conference shortly after the assault in his cab, allegedly by a young man hurling anti-Muslim epithets, the 43-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant recalled the traumatic stabbing and said in a fatigued voice that he could only assume, "Of course it was for my religion.”

The attack coincides with exploding ethnic tensions over the proposed Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan. Many fear the public backlash against the Park 51 project is whipping up a violent atmosphere of bigotry.

Warning of the violent climate coursing through city streets, Sharif said, “Right now, the public sentiment is very serious... All drivers should be more careful.”

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By Art Levine

In the weeks remaining before the November election, labor and progressives believe they've finally found an issue to help scare voters into keeping Democrats in power: the legendary "third rail" of American politics, Social Security.

Unfortunately, by going after the co-chairman of the presidentially-appointed fiscal commission, former Republican Senator Alan Simpson for comparing Social Security to a "cow with 310 million tits," they're also challenging a broader conservative framing of the deficit issue that the White House has largely accepted. That's the view that  bringing down deficits is more important than massive jobs creation spending to put Americans back to work. 

Yet liberal calls are mounting for Simpson to be fired from the commission by the AFL-CIO and its Alliance for Retired Americans, economist Paul Krugman and Rep. Jerry Nadler (hat tip to Politico and Firedoglake). Barbara Easterling, president of the Alliance, wrote to President Obama last week, denouncing a "pattern of disturbing, insensitive, biased and offensive comments by former Senator Alan Simpson....On behalf of the four million members of the Alliance for Retired Americans, I urge you to demand Mr. Simpson's resignation."

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By Lindsay Beyerstein

(Photo courtesy Health24.com)

Lack of sleep causes medical errors to skyrocket

Sleep deprivation is a silent public health threat, especially for medical residents. Pulling an all-nighter reduces your judgement and reflexes to the level of somone who is legally drunk.

Forty years of psychological research proves that sleep deprivation saps our mental faculties, including our ability to notice that we're impaired. It may come to feel normal, but the effects don't go away. That's bad enough for the average person trying to juggle work, family, and a social life. But consider the implications for medical residents who are responsible for patients' lives.

The Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academies of Science, undertook a year-long study at the behest of Congress to assess the impact of sleep deprivation on medical trainees. The 2008 report recommended that shifts be capped at 16 hours for the safety of residents and their patients.

Yet, new proposed guidelines for medical residents would allow most doctors in training to work shifts of up to 28 hours (24 hours, plus an additional hand-off period of up to 4 hours). Shifts for first-year residents (aka interns) would be capped at 16 hours.

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By David Moberg

With Labor Day plans that include Barack Obama at a Milwaukee rally and a half million worth of TV ads (see above), the AFL-CIO is ratcheting up its work on what the labor federation’s president Rich Trumka calls “a defining set of elections” this fall.

Trumka wants to make “economic patriotism” the key issue of those elections, where Democrats–more friendly to unions than Republicans, whatever their many faults–are expected to lose many seats in Congress. 

Trumka contrasts a warm, fuzzy and non-militant vision of unions , associated with a harmonious America where everyone works together, with rapacious corporate America, abetted by right-wing politicians, that ships jobs overseas, attacks workers’ rights and wages, and weakens social security, while working to cut taxes for the rich.

By delivering a strong message that both addresses voters’ major issue–jobs–and competes with the right’s phony patriotism and populism, Democrats could gain ground with many independents and fire up enthusiasm among much of their disillusioned base with a message like the one Trumka outlined in a press conference today:

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By Akito Yoshikane

As Labor Day approaches, many Americans are breathing a sigh of relief for the extra day off. On a day that celebrates unions and the eight-hour work day, plenty of people are feeling like their hard work isn’t exactly paying off the way it used to.

Even as productivity has continued to climb, wages have been either stagnant or declining. Household income for the average working family has continued to fall, but men, latinos and those without a college education have experienced an especially sharp deceleration of wage growth since the recession, according to a new briefing paper by the Economic Policy Institute.

The Washington, D.C.-based think tank says that from 2002 to 2007, productivity rose 11 percent but the hourly wage for high school and college educated workers fell. In fact, the average median household income (adjusted for inflation) actually earned $2,000 less during that period, going from $60,804 to $58,718. For the first time, family income levels sunk below what they had been at the beginning of the economic cycle.

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By Stephen Franklin

A relative of Gilmar Castillo Morales, one of the three Guatemalans identified among the victims of the slaughter of 72 illegal migrants in the Mexican state of Tanaulipas, shows his picture, on August 27, 2010.   (Photo by JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP/Getty Images)

Mexican gangs, lack of U.S. jobs make journey even more perilous

Many of the 72 migrants found dead recently in a drug hideout in Mexico were probably like the rest of those moving at this moment somewhere along one of the world’s longest job shape-ups.

If you are reading this in the morning, they have been moving all night since there’s less chance of getting caught in the dark. If it is the afternoon, they are resting. But their eyes don’t. 

They are looking northward.

The line-up begins at the southern U.S. border and stretches across Mexico and Central America and on down through Latin America. Sometimes it also picks up jobseekers from other continents, who are as desperate to join the American dream.

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By Roger Bybee

As Harley-Davidson executives' conduct turns swinish, the company's workers may have to call out their natural allies, the HOGs (Harley owners' groups) to demand that Harley keep manufacturing in Milwaukee.

Imagine thousands of riders circling management headquarters on a roaring, revved-up, full-volume picket line. That would send a message that an important part of the public finds the company's blackmail tactics appalling.

Harley is demanding that the United Steel Workers (USW) Local 2-209 and International Association of Machinists fork over $54 million in concessions and "flexible manufacturing" rules by mid-September, or else say goodbye to 1,400-1,700 Wisconsin factory jobs.

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By Joseph Riedel

LIUNA President Terry O'Sullivan (left), Vice President Joseph Biden's brother Jim and Teamsters President Jim Hoffa (right) at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, back when both unions were Change to Win members.   (Photo courtesy Change to Win)

Solidarity.  That was the message AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka sent in a statement welcoming the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) back into the fold after the organization announced on August 13 that it will rejoin the AFL-CIO, effective October 1, 2010.

In his statement, Trumka said, “We are very happy that LIUNA is rejoining the AFL-CIO at a critical moment for working people…LIUNA brings a proud history and dedication to the union movement and we are delighted to welcome them back to the AFL-CIO.”

Aside from the expected kumbaya moment where labor leaders flaunt terms like solidarity and coalition building, what does LIUNA’s return to the AFL-CIO mean in practice for the labor movement, the AFL-CIO, and more specifically, the other members of the AFL-CIO Building Trades Coalition Department? Will this move galvanize the building trades, or will it cause former tensions to resurface?  Once the ink is dry on the press statements and the photo ops have ended, there will be some serious issues to be hammered out between LIUNA and the AFL-CIO. 

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By Lindsay Beyerstein

Chilean Minister of Mining Laurence Golborne (2nd L) opens a tube used to send supplies to the trapped miners in Copiapo, 800 kilometers north of Santiago, on August 29, 2010.   (Photo by ARIEL MARINKOVIC/AFP/Getty Images)

The world rejoiced when 33 Chilean miners were found alive on August 22 in an underground refuge after an explosion in the San Jose copper mine. Chile's media-savvy president has staked his political career on a successful, and very public rescue effort.

But given the understandable elation of finding the men alive and their protracted rescue, it's easy to lose sight of the corporate malfeasance that caused the disaster in the first place.

Chile is the world's leading producer of copper. With the price of copper at a record high, mining companies are scrambling to extract as much ore as they can while the boom lasts. As we saw with BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster, a rush to make a quick buck is not conducive to safety.

Union leaders say mining is getting more dangerous all over Chile. 

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By Kari Lydersen

Bus drivers, sugar cane workers and teachers are among the trade unionists currently incarcerated and targeted for terror, torture and intimidation – along with their families – in Iran’s ongoing brutal campaign to suppress organized labor.

At least three members of the Vahed Bus Workers Syndicate are currently in prison and several others are facing suspended sentences or upcoming hearings that could lead to imprisonment. On August 1, bus drivers union leader Mansour Osanloo was sentenced to an additional one year term on charges related to supposed links with illegal opposition groups. He has been in and out of prison for the past five years. Osanloo’s daughter-in-law has also been attacked and tortured.

Osanloo was one of the founders of the independent union in 2005, which represents 17,000 bus drivers in the capital Tehran. The union had gained significant victories including a pay increase of $50 a month, mandatory provision of work clothes and two-year contracts for transient drivers. They also argued for $40 monthly childcare allowances for women drivers.

“These were not anti-government actions,” says the video on YouTube  produced by the campaign to free Osanloo, which is embedded above. “Nevertheless, today Mansour Osanloo is detained in the notorious Evin prison”—known for the torture and execution of political prisoners.

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