In These Times

By Jennifer Braudaway

Workers unite to make Wall Street pay

More than 1,000 union members, workers and activists joined AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President William George to protest in downtown Philadelphia on Friday. The demonstration was part of a two-week initiative that started Monday called “Good Jobs Now!” which, as In These Times reported, challenges the nation’s six largest banks to pay for their bailouts by contributing to job creation and doing their part to restore the economy. To read more about the protest in Philadelphia go here. For more on the “Good Jobs Now!” movement, go here. (See video above)

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By Roger Bybee

"We haven’t seen anything like this before," economist Heidi Shierholz, of the Economic Policy Institute, recently remarked. "[A] really deep recession combined with a really extended period, maybe as much as eight years...of highly elevated unemployment."

Nor have we seen a period in which unemployment benefits cover such a small share of the jobless, imposing unbearable stress levels for the unemployed and their families.

A 2009 study of 1,200 jobless workers conducted by scholars at Rutgers, called the The Anguish of Unemployment, showed that just under half—43%—of the unemployed actually received unemployment benefits during the previous year. That "broadly reflects the national average," as Business Week put it. And 84% of the workers received no severance package or other compensation.

DESPITE AMERICA'S RICHES, A SHREDDED SAFETY NET

The absence of unemployment benefits has two obvious impacts. First, the economy loses consumer spending needed to re-ignite America's sputtering economy and get us beyond a "jobless recovery. But as Robert Reich points out, a complacent Cororate America is finding consumers overseas, as he points out in his article "The Sham Recovery." Worse, it deprives workers and their families of both income and independence.

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An immigration reform activist holds a sign prior to a May Day march to the White House on May 1, 2009.   (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

By R.M. Arrieta

As workers continue to be exploited by "Bracero-style" guest worker programs across the country, immigrant rights groups are gearing up for Sunday's immigrant rights march in Washington D.C.

A lawsuit filed this week by three migrant Mexican women who worked at Captain Charlie’s Seafood, Inc. in North Carolina—and allege they were victims of gender discrimination and wage theft—illustrates why people are marching to change America's immigration system.

Despite claims that women have advanced in the workplace, many are still treated like commodities; this is especially true for immigrant women who are particularly susceptible ­to exploitation.

Captain Charlie’s recruited men and women in Mexico and promised to pay the going-rate for seafood processing. But once workers arrived, the company reneged on its promise of a living wage. Companies will often advertise open jobs at low wages in the U.S. and thus ensure they can hire "guest workers" at even lower wages because they know that U.S. citizens will not apply.

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Rabbi Michael Feinberg and Sara Said at a 2007 protest in support of the Khalil Gibran International Academy.   (Photo courtesy Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media (AWAAM))

By Michelle Chen

In 2007, New York City public schools were poised to break new cultural ground. The city established the Khalil Gibran International Academy, a comprehensive public school specializing in the Arabic language. The grade 6-12 school, the first of its kind, was designed as a symbol of cross-cultural understanding in a city still healing from the scars of September 11.

It was also the opportunity of a lifetime for Debbie Almontaser, a Yemeni-American New Yorker, longtime educator and activist, who was chosen to head the new school. But that dream was soon extinguished by those who believe the city has no business engaging Arab culture through the classroom.

Before the school even opened its doors, a right-wing cabal launched a smear campaign against Almontaser and the city's Arab and Muslim communities. In the end, the school survived, but Almontaser was ousted in a storm of anti-Muslim screeds from the conservative media and blogosphere.

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The mine at Cananea. Copper mining and labor struggles have defined life in Cananea for more than a century.   (Photo by Alberto Quiñones, via Flickr.)

By Kari Lydersen

Mexican miners at Cananea, one of the world’s largest open pit copper mines and a cradle of the Mexican Revolution, have been on strike since July 2007 in a brutal stand-off with the company Grupo Mexico and the government. The strike has elicited solidarity strikes and actions across the country and is a key piece of a larger battle for union rights and democracy in Mexico.

The miners union and union democracy in general suffered a serious blow as a federal court decided last month that Grupo Mexico can fire the striking workers and terminate their labor agreement because the mine has become “inoperable” due to neglect and sabotage during the strike. The website LabourStart says the court decision “effectively eliminat(es) the right to strike in Mexico.”

Miners originally went on strike over extreme health and safety problems, and they have long charged that the company intentionally allowed conditions to deteriorate to try to break the union. Now, a serious battle could be brewing: The miners union has vowed to continue striking until a fair labor agreement is reached, and the government has threatened to use force to evict the miners.

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By David Moberg

With what AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka described as percentage support in the “high ‘90s,” the AFL-CIO executive council threw its support behind the healthcare reform legislation today and vowed to mobilize members and state and local labor federations to push undecided members of Congress to vote for it.

“It’s good for working families, now and even more in the future,” Trumka said today. “But it’s not a perfect bill.” He insisted that labor would continue to fight for improvements, but even this imperfect bill is “an opportunity to change history we can not afford to miss.”

Trumka argues that labor’s efforts had already improved the bill, making it “a far more progressive bill, a better bill, with more cost control.” Unions had managed to eliminate 80 percent of the proposed excise tax on high-cost insurance plans, a tax that will hit both union and non-union middle-income workers. He says that the labor movement has time to rework undesirable features, such as a last-minute regressive change in the cost-of-living adjustment of the threshold for the excise tax that will take place ten years from now.

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An Indian woman works at a construction project on February 1, 2010, in New Delhi, India. The Commonwealth Games are due to be held in the Indian capital from October 3-14, 2010, but concerns remain over construction of its sporting and transport infrastructure.   (Photo by DANIEL BEREHULAK/Getty Images)

By Lindsay Beyerstein

Forty-three workers have been killed on Commonwealth Games projects in Delhi, India, according to a report released yesterday by a special panel. The High Court of Dehli appointed the four-member body to investigate rampant abuses of migrant construction workers in the run-up to the games.

Every four years, athletes from Britain and its former colonies face off in the Commonwealth Games, also known as the "Friendly Games." But the $16 billion spectacle doesn't seem so friendly to the people building the facilies.

Untold thousands of migrant workers have traveled to the capital in the hopes of getting construction jobs—there are an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 migrant construction workers in the city. They are hard at work building facilities and refurbishing tourist destinations, and the work is proceeding at breakneck speed because so many projects are behind schedule.

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President Barack Obama signs the HIRE Act alongside lawmakers, during a ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House, on March 18, 2010.   (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

By Art Levine

Congress sent to the White House Wednesday a nearly $18 billion jobs bill that most experts don't believe will create anywhere near the 11 million jobs needed to bring us back to pre-recession unemployment levels.

The bill is similar to an earlier $15 billion bill passed by the Senate, with some minor fixes in the House, that focuses on long-term infrastructure and what some critics see as dubious tax cuts for businesses. The $17.6 billion bill includes a one-year extension of the federal highway program, an extension of the Build America Bonds program that helps states finance certain infrastructure projects and tax incentives for employers to hire workers, as recapped by the AFL-CIO blog.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is one leader who understands that far more is needed, but it's not at all clear that there's either the grassroots activism or political appetite in Congress for massive spending needed to create millions of new jobs. This new package, by most assessments, wouldn't create any more than 250,000 new jobs.

Trumka and other advocates offer ambitous jobs plans that don't seem to have much traction now, despite a new proposed bill to create a million new local jobs. Trumka said:

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(Photo via Getty)

By Michelle Chen

For months, they toiled in a hellish wasteland of dust and rubble, where a towering symbol of modernity had crumbled into a pyre of toxic debris. Years later, the embers of Ground Zero still burn for the thousands who have seen their bodies ravaged by the fallout.

But over the past several days, the workers made ill by their work at the World Trade Center site received a dose of fresh hope, along with some familiar creeping doubt.

The city announced last week an offer for a massive settlement to end the burdensome litigation related to post-9/11 worker health issues, including asthma and heart problems. The deal would be worth up to about $675 million, allocating payments among police, firefighters and construction workers that could range up to $1 million.

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Chile's Foreign Minister Ignacio Walker, New Zealand's Trade Minister Jim Sutton, Singapore's Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang and Brunei Princess Hajah Masna join hands in South Korean on June 2, 2005, six months before a trans-Pacific free-trade agreement between their four countries came into force.   (Photo by KIM JAE-HWAN/AFP/Getty Images)

By David Moberg

As President Obama prepares for his trip to Asia next week, his administration’s trade negotiators are busy in Australia this week in the first round of talks about a new Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement (TPA). 

Although the idea originated in the Bush administration, labor officials and other progressive critics of past trade deals see the TPA talks as a test of whether Obama will develop a new model for such agreements, as he promised on the campaign trail.

“This is a great opportunity for the administration to show how they’re going to reform trade policy or whether they’ll continue with the past policies,” says AFL-CIO deputy chief of staff Thea Lee, a longtime trade policy expert. “It’s not clear at this point what they will do. But there’s a high level of anxiety.” Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch Director Lori Wallach struck the same note: “As a candidate Obama committed to specific trade policy reforms. This is where the rubber hits the road. We’ll se if we get a new model of trade as Obama promised or revert back to the Bush model following NAFTA.”

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Frances Moore Lappé—author of the classic Diet for a Small Planet and other books that explore the roots of and solutions to hunger—appeared on GRITtv yesterday, and offered a minute-long observation about the inherent dangers of concentrated wealth (aka power). It's worth watching:

Her opening reference is to Barack Obama.

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A Toyota dealership in Torrance, Calif., on March 12, 2010.   (Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

About 90% of workers approve deal

By Akito Yoshikane

The United Auto Workers and Toyota reached a tentative agreement late Monday to shut down the company's only unionized factory in North America.

As part of the agreement, Toyota will pay $250 million to roughly 4,600 salaried and hourly employees at the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant, aka NUMMI. The mass layoffs will be largest in California since the Great Recession started in December 2007.

The factory, located in Fremont, is the last auto manufacturing plant in California. Up to 20,000 jobs in the surrounding area will also be affected by the closure. It's a move that couldn't have come at a worse time, as the surrounding communities grapple with the Great Recession and the state faces a massive budget crisis.

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