Employee Free Choice Stuggle for Card Check

The New York Times today reported Democrats Drop Key Part of Bill to Assist Unions. Evidently,

A half-dozen senators friendly to labor have decided to drop a central provision of a bill that would have made it easier to organize workers.

Card check is the most important provision of the legislation, and would have "required employers to recognize a union as soon as a majority of workers signed cards saying they wanted a union."

Efforts continue to add provisions to the revised legislation that would offer some protections to workers involved in union drives. One would require employers to give union organizers access to company property. Another would bar employers from requiring workers to attend anti-union sessions that labor supporters deride as “captive audience meetings.”

While these provisions may be helpful, the struggle for card check may continue if the AFL-CIO leadership and rank and file organized labor maintains the focus on that important initiative.

In a period of a continuing attack on real wages, the importance of working people uniting to fight to meet our needs and limit or end exploitation at the work place is vital. The claims by business forces that card check is anti-democratic can only be characterized as cynical and hypocritcal, coming from people who do everything possible to limit democratic rights in the work place and in the larger society in favor of their own self-interest.

The New York Times article can be found here.

In a related statement on July 13th, a few days before the Senator's statement, "President Barack Obama is telling labor leaders he remains committed to passage of a bill that would make it easier to form unions, but he's not offering any timeline." This reinforces the need to continue to struggle for card check. A strong union force in the United States is a key component to dealing with many of the social challenges we face today, balancing the power of big business, and bringing millions of people's voices to the table.

Hard-hit Gary stops garbage pickup

Paul S. Kaczocha
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 07/15/09 16:19

GARY, Ind. – In another sign of the economic crisis hitting working class cities around the country, angry residents and laid off city workers rallied in front of this city’s new General Services building. The crowd brought uncollected garbage and dumped it in front of the building sign. This was only the second day of a stop in the collection of household waste here.



The issue started in October last year when Mayor Rudy Clay announced that the city was going to privatize the garbage collection and start charging its over 28,000 households a $12 monthly fee for trash pickup, under a no-bid contract with Allied Waste, a subsidiary of RSG Inc. which made over $2 billion last year.

The citizen group, Miller Citizen Corporation (MCC), took the city to court, arguing that garbage collection was part of the property taxes residents pay. Ultimately the courts ordered the city to bid the contract, declaring that the fee had to be approved by the City Council and that people’s water could not be cut off for lack of payment of the garbage fee.

Another citizens group, the Central District Organizing Project (CDOP), also joined the fight supporting the 49 laid-off city workers, many of whom were at the rally.

The MCC charged that according to the city’s own figures it cost only $2.9 million annually to pay the workers with benefits, pay for fuel and maintain the equipment, while Allied Waste was charging over $5 million on top of the $2 million tipping fee the city already pays to them. The city argues that it is trying to save money and close a $26 million dollar gap in the budget.

The issue came to a head last week when the City Council voted 6-3 against charging residents the $12 fee, many arguing that there was not even a signed contract yet with Allied. As a result garbage collection ceased this week.

The head of the MCC, attorney Douglas Grimes, charged at the rally that the city “did not need to privatize a basic service that had been done by the city for over 100 years.” He also charged that Allied had a 36 percent profit margin.

“Private enterprise is not here to help you unless they can help themselves, privatization is rarely cheaper,” he added. “The city can rehire these workers and begin to collect garbage again. Just walk down the street and you can see the garbage trucks behind the fence.” The MCC and CDOP, which organized the rally, urged citizens to take their garbage to City Hall.

Lori Peterson, from the CDOP, charged the city with dereliction of duty for saying that they were no longer going to pick up the garbage. “It’s like saying they won’t send out an EMT, fireman or police if someone calls in need,” she stressed.

The workers also spoke about how they had taken 23 percent in cuts to save their jobs and had been lied to when the city laid them off. The Teamsters Union is fighting the layoffs, which did not occur by seniority amongst other issues. Allied had rehired some of the younger, less experienced workers.

“We all live here in Gary, and they hired a company from out of the city and hire outside the city,” the workers charged.

Both the MCC and CDOP are demanding a rehiring of the workers, an end to the fee and the resumption of city-based collection.

Healthcare: Change the Debate Support a Real Public Option

Dear Friends,

In mid-May, in an effort to reach consensus, President Obama secured a deal with the health insurance companies to trim 1.5% of their costs each year for ten years saving a total of $2 trillion dollars, which would be reprogrammed into healthcare. Just two days after the announcement at the White House the insurance companies reneged on the deal which was designed to protect and increase their revenue at least 35% The insurance companies reneged on the deal because they refuse any restraint on increasing premiums, copays and deductibles - core to their profits. No wonder a recent USA Today poll found that only four percent of Americans trust insurance companies. This is within the margin of error, which means it is possible that NO ONE TRUSTS insurance companies.

Then why does Congress trust the insurance companies? Yesterday HR 3200 "America's Affordable Health Choices Act," a 1000 page bill was delivered to members. The title of the bill raises a question: "Affordable" for whom?.

Of $2.4 trillion spent annually for health care in America, fully $800 billion goes for the activities of the for-profit insurer-based system. This means one of every three health care dollars is siphoned off for corporate profits, stock options, executive salaries, advertising, marketing and the cost of paper work, (which can be anywhere between 15 - 35% in the private sector as compared to Medicare, the single payer plan which has only 3% administrative costs).

50 million Americans are uninsured and another 50 million are under insured while for-profit insurance companies divert precious health care dollars to non-health care purposes. Eliminate the for-profit health care system and its extraordinary overhead, put the money into healthcare and everyone will be covered, everyone will be able to afford health care.

Today three committees will begin marking up and amending HR3200. In this, one of the most momentous public policy debates in the past 70 years, single payer, the only viable "public option," the one that makes sound business sense, controls costs and covers everyone was taken off the table.

In contrast to HR3200 ... HR676 calls for a universal single-payer health care system in the United States, Medicare for All. It has over 85 co-sponsors in Congress with the support of millions of Americans and countless physicians and nurses. How does HR-676 control costs and cover everyone? It cuts out the for-profit middle men and delivers care directly to consumers and Medicare acts as the single payer of bills. It also recognizes that under the current system for-profit insurance companies make money NOT providing health care.

This week is the time to break the hold which the insurance companies have on our political process. Tell Congress to stand up to the insurance companies. Ask members to sign on to the only real public option, HR 676, a single-payer healthcare system.

Hundreds of local labor unions, thousands of physicians and millions of Americans are standing behind us. With a draft of HR3200 now circulating, It is up to each and every one of us to organize and rally for the cause of single-payer healthcare. Change the debate. Now is the time.

The time to act is now!

Sincerely Yours,
Dennis


PS - Over the next several months, I will be engaging all of you with frequent updates and will ask you to continue a movement to fight for what needs to be done now; ending this war in Iraq and stopping the escalation in Afghanistan, attaining true single-payer healthcare for all Americans, standing up for my brothers and sisters of organized labor.

After you have contacted your member of Congress, please tell us your thoughts and ideas on how you are organizing your friends and neighbors towards a single-payer movement and all of the other issues that are important to us.

Contact us at feedback@kucinich.us.

Jobs or Income Now for Working Families In The Current Economic Crisis

Ok, here are the facts as reported on July 9 in the New York Times and elsewhere:

The official national unemployment rate is 9.5%. That is huge. Unofficial figures run closer to 15% unemployment.

The count for continuing unemployment claims is 6.88 million people today, many of those people part of a struggling family and community. This is the most people officially unemployed since records started to be kept in 1967. And this doesn't include the many millions of people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits.

GM has emerged from bankruptcy. After receiving over $30 billion tax dollars to help it deal with the economic crisis, the "new" GM plans to layoff between 30,000 and 40,000 people in the USA.

The New York Times in a different article on July 1 reported "In the first report, construction spending fell more than expected in May, a sign the problems facing the nation’s builders are far from over."

In a report entitled Joblessness Hits 9.5%, Deflating Recovery Hopes, on July 2 the New York Times reported

“The numbers are indicative of a continued, very severe recession,” said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh. “There’s nothing in here to show that the economy and the market are pulling out of the grip of recession.”

What is the point of all this doom and gloom? Something is wrong with the way we are responding to the current economic situation.

People need to be working. We have a social responsibility to ensure that the basic needs of working families are met by providing work at living wages or equivalent funds to keep us going while unemployed.

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman wrote on July 2 that,

[s]ince the recession began, the U.S. economy has lost 6 ½ million jobs — and as that grim employment report confirmed, it’s continuing to lose jobs at a rapid pace. Once you take into account the 100,000-plus new jobs that we need each month just to keep up with a growing population, we’re about 8 ½ million jobs in the hole.

And the deeper the hole gets, the harder it will be to dig ourselves out. The job figures weren’t the only bad news in Thursday’s report, which also showed wages stalling and possibly on the verge of outright decline. That’s a recipe for a descent into Japanese-style deflation, which is very difficult to reverse. Lost decade, anyone?

Wait — there’s more bad news: the fiscal crisis of the states. Unlike the federal government, states are required to run balanced budgets. And faced with a sharp drop in revenue, most states are preparing savage budget cuts, many of them at the expense of the most vulnerable. Aside from directly creating a great deal of misery, these cuts will depress the economy even further.

As a society we have to take care of our working families. We have, in my opinion, a social responsibility to provide work or wages to all our unemployed regardless of legal status or country of origin, bar none. Families should not be homeless. People should not be forced to beg for food money on the medians between traffic lanes. Our youth should graduate high school and college with work available to them.

The brutality of the current situation is not a result of the policies or practices of working people in the United States. The current crisis is a crisis of overproduction. It is not a result of the lack of foresight or lack of savings by working families. It is a result of the internal systemic problems endemic to capitalism.

The situation has to be addressed with urgency. Families are suffering. People are going hungry. Foreclosures and evictions continue to run rampant.

A program for Jobs or Income Now is needed today.

Sign the Petition for a National Cesar E. Chavez Holiday!

The United Farm Workers and the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation are proud to support the grassroots efforts of the Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday Coalition.

Cesar was in Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s words, "one of the heroic figures of our time." He led the historic non-violent movement for farm worker rights and dedicated himself to building a movement of poor working people that extended beyond the fields and into cities and towns across the nation.

He inspired farm workers and millions of people who never worked on a farm to commit themselves to social, economic and civil rights activism. Cesar’s legacy, like the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., continues to educate, inspire and empower people from all walks of life. He is a role model for all Americans and for generations to come.

Please help us ensure all Americans learn about Cesar’s life and work. The Cesar Chavez National Holiday Coalition is gathering signatures on petitions asking Congress to designate March 31, Cesar’s birthday and the day the UFW was founded, as Cesar Chavez Day. Sign the petition today. Help ensure Cesar's legacy is recognized and celebrated throughout our nation with a federal paid holiday and a day of service and learning in our public schools.

The petition is available here.

Full Petition Text:

Petition to President Obama and members of the U.S. Congress

I call on the U.S. Congress to establish an official federal paid holiday in honor of Cesar E. Chavez, the late president of the United Farm Workers, on his birthday, March 31. This should include a Cesar Chavez day of service-learning and community action.
Signed by:

[Your name]
[Your address]

Let Senator Bayh Know We Stand for HR676 and S. 703

As the discussion on health care moves forward, its important to participate in the process, and not to leave it to the big business interests to define what kind of health care system reforms are enacted. Please take a moment to call Senator Bayh and let him know you stand with the thousands who have expressed support nationally for HR676 - the National Health Care System, also known as Medicare for All. The senate version of this bill is called S. 703.

Senator Bayh can be contacted at:

1650 Market Tower
10 West Market Street
Indianapolis, IN 46204
(317) 554-0750

or

131 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-5623

Contact information for the Senator's other regional area addresses are available here.

Background information on this issue is available from Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan and Physicians for a National Health Program.

Tell Senator Bayh that single-payer health reform is the only practicable way to achieve his stated goal of universal, comprehensive coverage at an affordable price.

Only single payer, by redirecting the vast sums wasted annually on bureaucracy and paperwork back into care, can assure high-quality coverage for everyone with no net increase in U.S. health spending. Only single payer can rein in costs.

Lesser reforms, with or without a “public option,” won’t fix our broken system.

The World Condemns the Coup in Honduras, Supports Zelaya's Return

The struggle to reunite the Honduran people with their democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya, continues today.

Many in the United States find ourselves watching aghast and angered as the Honduran coup criminals act with flagrant brutality against the people of Honduras to try to achieve an anti-democratic strike against the Honduran working people's struggle.

The coup leader's desperate attacks on the Honduran people in an attempt squash support for President Zelaya is resulting in many woundings and deaths.

As reported in El Pais:

A nurse whose name cannot be mentioned guided him through rooms full of people wounded by bullets. "They have been arriving for several nights," she explained, "the police bring them and leave them here. All of them were shot during the coup. Some of them are in very bad shape. ... None of this is reported in the newspapers."

Did President Zalaya break Honduran law, as the coup leadership claims? No!

As reported by ALBERTO VALLENTE THORENSEN in CounterPunch's article Behind the Honduran Coup: Why Zelaya's Actions Were Legal:

The Honduran Supreme Court of Justice, Attorney General, National Congress, Armed Forces and Supreme Electoral Tribunal have all falsely accused Manuel Zelaya of attempting a referendum to extend his term in office.

According to Honduran law, this attempt would be illegal. ...

Nevertheless, this is far from what President Zelaya attempted to do in Honduras the past Sunday and which the Honduran political/military elites disliked so much. President Zelaya intended to perform a non-binding public consultation, about the conformation of an elected National Constituent Assembly....

Furthermore, the Honduran Constitution says nothing against the conformation of an elected National Constituent Assembly, with the mandate to draw up a completely new constitution, which the Honduran public would need to approve. ...

...The National Constituent Assembly’s mandate would come directly from the Honduran people, who would have to approve the new draft for a constitution, unlike constitutional amendments that only need 2/3 of the votes in Congress. This popular constitution would be more democratic and it would contrast with the current 1982 Constitution, which was the product of a context characterized by counter-insurgency policies supported by the US-government, civil façade military governments and undemocratic policies.

For what crimes against the rich is President Zelaya being persecuted? As reported by Interconnect:

Since Zelaya became president Honduras has:

a.. Increased the minimum wage.
b.. Improved working conditions of teachers.
c.. Instituted measures to re-nationalize energy-generating plants and the telephone system.
d.. Joined Petrocaribe, the oil-sharing plan begun by Venezuela.
e.. Joined ALBA, the Venezuelan-led trade bloc.
f.. Delayed formal accreditation of US Ambassador Hugo Llorens.
g.. Called for a national referendum to replace the Honduran constitution.

Zelaya has worked to loosen the death grip of US capital and Honduran oligarchies on the country's resources, supported labor, and tightened relationships with regional partners.

The Organization of American States, the European Union, and most Latin American countries have denounced the coup. President Obama has not yet called the coup a coup, which would have legal ramifications in the United States, but he has expressed support for the people protesting against the coup. Some Honduran towns have declared they do not recognize the coup government, and two army battalions are standing against the coup.

It is urgent to express support for the democratic rights of the people of Honduras. Please call President Obama at 202-456-1111 and ask that he call for the return of President Zelaya and Chancellor Rodas, and denounce the coup as a coup, which would result in ending US aid to Honduras until President Zelaya's return.

Central Indiana Club Asks Indianapolis' 7th Congressional District To Support HR676

The Communist Party CPUSA Central Indiana Club is initiating a letter writing campaign to request of our Congressman, Andre Carson, that he renew his support for a single-payer national health insurance system by co-sponsoring HR 676, the U.S. National Health Insurance Act. HR 676 is also known as the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act.

Single-payer national health insurance would save enough on administrative paperwork - more than $300 billion per year - to provide comprehensive coverage to all Americans. It would provide full choice of doctor and hospital for patients, and unleash physicians from arbitrary corporate dictates over patient care. It would control the health expenses currently crippling our economy and provide for a wholesome revitalization of our democratic values.

Congressman Carson, like his grandmother Julia Carson, has a proud history of strongly supporting HR 676. Congressman Carson co-sponsored the bill in the 110th Congress.

More information on HR676 is available at Hoosiers for a Common Sense Health Plan, Physicians for a National Health Program, and HealthCare-NOW!.

Please write personal letters and snail mail them to Congressman Carson at:

Congressman André Carson
Julia Carson Government Center
300 East Fall Creek Parkway North Drive, #300
Indianapolis, IN 46205
Phone: (317) 283-6516
Fax: (317) 283-6567

We believe that a personal letter is the best way to get your support for HR676 heard by the Congressman.

Reforming health care requires getting rid of the insurance companies. Anything less may have some positive overall effect but won't get to the heart of the matter; the health insurance companies siphoning off billions of dollars for useless administrative fees and big dollar executive pay. HR 676 reinstates the patient-physician relationship as the primary health care relationship, increases democratic control over one of the biggest and most expensive sectors of our economy, and removes a layer of parasites from the health care system. Retraining for current workers in that sector is included in the bill.

We hope that you will take the time to write to Congressman Carson and ask that he again endorse HR 676, the National Health Insurance Bill.

A sample letter is included below.

Thank you.

Sample Letter:

Congressman André Carson
Julia Carson Government Center
300 East Fall Creek Parkway North Drive, #300
Indianapolis, IN 46205

Dear Congressman Carson:

Thank you for your past support for HR 676, the United States National Health Care Act.

Now that Democrats control Congress, the time is ripe to rally round a comprehensive solution for America’s failed, fragmented, irrational, cruel, wasteful, and costly health care system.

While the elderly and the disabled are covered by popular Medicare and the poor have Medicaid, most working families must rely on the shrinking value of employer-based private health insurance or they are among the 46.6 million who have no health insurance at all. This disarray persists even as we spend more than two trillion dollars a year on health care, two to three times per capita of any other country.

Reforms around the edges of the system won't work. The administrative cost of keeping the many insurance companies, with their redundant and complex paper work and costs, must be removed from the system in order to use that money to provide actual health care benefits.

Currently, unions worry about the affordability of adequate coverage and businesses struggle with the soaring costs of coverage while foreign competition, mostly countries with national health insurance, is totally free of that expense.

Please renew your support for the comprehensive solution, HR 676, the Conyers Medicare For All Bill, also known as the United States National Health Care Act. Huge savings would accrue from drastically simplified administration plus the proven efficiency of a universal risk pool. In the last Congress, you joined with at least 79 other Democrats in resisting the well-financed opposition of the insurance industry and signed on as a cosponsor of HR 676. Please let me know you are now ready to renew your commitment to a single-payer health system or, if not, why not. I look forward to your response on this most pressing domestic issue.

As Martin Luther King said in 1966, "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane."

Sincerely,

Your Name