the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Apr 1, 2002
With the invasion of the West Bank city of Ramallah, and finally the siege of the office of Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, the Israeli military began a big offensive against the Palestinian population. Jets, helicopter gunships, tanks and troops have been unleashed.
The Israeli military, one of the largest and best armed in the world, is carrying out a real war against an entire people, the Palestinians.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his main backers, the U.S. government, may claim that this war is a protection for the Israeli peoples. But this is a cynical lie. For what kind of protection or security can the Israeli population have, when it is repressing an entire population, when it occupies its territory, killing their men, women and children? What kind of security can the Israeli people have, when they serve as the executioners and prison guards of the Palestinian people, deepening the ditch of hatred and blood that separates them from their neighbors?
This war, like the wars before, has not brought the Israeli people more security. It has only made them a target of a people who are so desperate, who have so little to lose, that they are ready to kill themselves if they can take a few Israelis with them. The Israeli population has been put in its own prison of fear, desperation and grief.
This is the terrible logic of what the Israeli state has done from its very beginnings, over half a century ago. The Israeli state might have promised to be a sanctuary for the Jewish people, who themselves were the victims of persecution, repression and extermination. But by Zionist terrorist groups who established Israel massacring and chasing out the Palestinians who were already living there, by occupying their lands, this set in motion an unending bloodbath–one which the Israeli state kept going with ever more horrifying means. Even during those rare moments of “peace,” the conflict was simmering underground, ready to break out into new violence, a war without end.
Over the decades, the U.S. government has been the main supporter of the Israeli state, making it by far the largest recipient of U.S. military and economic aid. U.S. politicians cloak this in all kinds of hypocritical language about how much it supports the Jewish people. The real reason is that the U.S. rulers use the Israeli population as cannon fodder to control a whole region so key to the interests of the U.S. capitalists.
But what Israel does is just a small version of what the U.S. does. The Israeli state does in the Middle East what the U.S. military does all over the world, protecting the profits of the big U.S. capitalists, through war, violence and the threat of violence, against peoples everywhere.
U.S. politicians may tell us that the U.S. military is sent around the world to maintain our security. This is as big a lie as the lies the Israeli politicians tell their own people. Just like in Israel, ordinary people in this country pay the price for these wars and repression. We pay the price, both as soldiers and as civilians, like those thousands who died in the World Trade Center.
Despite the assurances of politicians, no country can be a fortress, without it also becoming a prison, no people can repress another people, without becoming also a target for violence themselves.
The terrible war between Israel and the Palestinians is not in any way isolated from what the U.S. government does all over the world. The people in this country, like the people of Israel, can have no security so long as we do not oppose the criminal wars and adventures of the ruling class of this country.
Apr 1, 2002
On March 11, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that acid had eaten away a 6-inch chunk of steel covering the lid on a nuclear reactor at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant about 25 miles east of Toledo, Ohio. All that was left to stop radioactive water from bursting out of the reactor vessel was a 3/8 inch stainless steel liner. And this liner had begun to bulge outward under 2200 pounds of pressure per square inch.
If this thin liner had given way, the results could have been catastrophic. Radioactive water would have rushed into the reactor’s containment vessel, and this might have short circuited the reactor’s cooling system. In other words the reactor could have undergone a “meltdown.”
None of the inspections done every two years detected either the boric acid leak or the eating away of the lid–despite estimates that this has been going on for at least 12 years.
Nor did the plant operators do anything when rust particles began to be detected in the air filters two years ago–a sign that nuclear power experts say should have tipped off the plant’s operators that something was seriously wrong.
As for the NRC, it did not require any extra inspections of Davis- Besse (or of 67 other similar nuclear reactors) when this type of reactor in South Carolina owned by Duke Energy Corporation developed cracks a year ago.
This certainly puts the lie to all those claims that the nuclear power industry is becoming safer. It’s just being inspected less thoroughly!
Apr 1, 2002
Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm that helped Enron shred thousands of documents, is slated for trial on May 6–but not on very serious charges, only one count of obstruction of justice.
On March 22, Paul A. Volcker, who used to be the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, proposed that he would agree to take over Andersen in order to save it. His only conditions? Drop the federal case against Andersen and block people from suing Andersen.
With Volcker’s past service on the Fed, there is no doubt that his proposals have support from the highest government and banking circles.
Once again the government is seeking a way to save big business from itself. And once again, at the expense of the population.
Will this proposal fly? It all depends on whether the politicians think they can get away with bailing out Andersen’s owners and investors–without suffering too much political damage. Time will tell.
But there’s no doubt about what they will do if they think they have the chance.
Apr 1, 2002
After the Enron scandal broke last fall, the General Accounting Office (GAO), the accounting arm of Congress, asked the Bush administration for documents relating to how it had worked out its national energy policy. The Bush administration refused, and the GAO took them to court.
Finally at the end of March, the Bush administration released thousands of documents, but only after they had been heavily censored. Even censored, they showed a lot.
To work out the national energy policy, the Bush administration met with more than 100 people–every single one of them either an energy industry executive, trade association leader or company lobbyist, including, of course, for Enron. But administration officials did not meet a single representative of environmental organizations or consumer groups. The documents show that when Spencer Abraham, Bush’s Secretary of Energy, was contacted by a coalition of 30 environmental organizations, he said he was too busy to meet with them.
Why bother? The administration had already been given its “energy policy”! For example, the American Petroleum Institute handed Abraham a proposed draft of an executive order that called for massive subsidies to the oil companies and the wholesale elimination of key health and environmental safeguards. Two months later, Bush signed an executive order that was virtually identical to what the oil industry had written.
Obviously, what counts in the shaping of national energy policy is putting more zip into corporate profits–at the expense of taxpayers, consumers and the environment.
That was hardly a secret, even before the documents were released!
Besides that, the Bush administration has found their fall guy–Spencer Abraham.
When the energy commission was set up, Bush put Vice-President Cheney in charge. Now, however, Spencer Abraham has stepped forward to take credit for it. More exactly–to take the heat in case the scandal gets bigger.
Bush always was a slippery character–seems that Cheney is too.
Apr 1, 2002
Cheney’s national energy report proposed to start construction of new nuclear power plants in the U.S. for the first time since the near disaster at Three Mile Island in 1979. The report also gave favorable mention to a new nuclear reactor design–called a “pebble-bed” reactor–that supposedly could be smaller, more efficient and safer than the reactors now in use.
Information recently obtained by the New York Times reveals that this supposedly new design isn’t really new after all. A similar reactor was built and used in Germany years ago–and failed. Nuclear experts outside of the energy industry are extremely doubtful that new reactors of similar design would be safe.
However, the pebble-bed design does seem to have one important thing going for it. It is being proposed by the Exelon Corporation of Chicago. And Exelon has contributed a whole lot more than just “pebbles” to the Republican Party–over half a million dollars in the two years before the 2000 presidential election and over a third of a million in the year following.
But do political contributions make a nuclear reactor design safe?
Apr 1, 2002
The former chairman of Bethlehem Steel was eased out of his position a month before the company filed for bankruptcy. He kept a job, however, as a mere president and chief financial officer, earning $750,000 before retiring this January.
Bethlehem Steel claims it is so broke it cannot pay its work force’s pensions. If it’s true, the company has been breaking the law on pension funds, and its top officers should be prosecuted.
Instead–like this former chairman–they are getting fat pay checks while the company claims it cannot pay its bills. The chairman got a 2.5 million dollar retirement package when he said farewell. The guy who replaced him got a salary of $900,000 and another executive who retired in January got a one million dollar package.
It’s not just that he who has the gold makes the rules; it’s that he who has the gold breaks the rules–and then is rewarded!
Apr 1, 2002
U.S. Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White, a former Enron executive, has assured the U.S. House Government Reform Committee, that although he made 44 phone calls to top Enron executives and buddies last October, most of what they talked about was their golf game and racquetball. Sure, he might have sold 200,000 shares of Enron stock in the month of October, and made a total of $12.1 million. Sure, White happened to sell a bulk of those shares on October 29–precisely one day before Enron admitted that it was being investigated by the SEC (Security and Exchange Commission), and the Enron stock took a steep dive.
But–and he wants everyone to believe this–he had nothing to do with any insider information that these executives might have given him.
Sure–and elephants fly!
The fact is that White has something of a track record for not telling the truth. Several of the people who worked under White when he was the co-chairman of a major Enron division, Enron Energy Services (EES), complained that his division consistently lied about how much money it made. Last August, a former sales manager, Margaret Ceconi, e-mailed then chairman Ken Lay that EES hid losses on contracts worth more than 500 million dollars. Said Ceconi, “This is common knowledge among all EES employees, and is actually joked about.”
Of course, this means that White had the main qualification for being a politician–he can tell any old lie, without being embarrassed at all.
Apr 1, 2002
Widows of coal miners who have died from black lung disease are marching from West Virginia, through Pennsylvania and then to Washington. They are demanding that miners and their widows’ receive black lung benefits that miners fought for and won over 30 years ago.
Black lung disease is caused by breathing coal dust. It reduces lung functioning and eventually can cause death. It is estimated that 1,500 miners die every year from the disease. There are now about 80,000 miners or widows who receive black lung benefits.
There is no cure for black lung, but it can be prevented by proper use of methods to limit the amount of coal dust in the air in mines. But this is what the mine owners don’t do.
In a series of strikes starting in 1969, coal miners forced the government and the coal bosses to recognize black lung as an occupational disease. A government fund, financed by taxes on the coal companies, was set up to pay miners’ retirement benefits if they were disabled by black lung disease. These benefits were also extended to the widows of miners who died from black lung. But almost as soon as the miners’ movement receded, the government began to add new regulations for qualifying. Today only seven out of every 100 who apply qualify.
Some small improvements in the regulations were scheduled to go into effect on January 19, 2001. This would have increased the number qualifying for benefits up to an estimated... 12 of every 100. However, the bosses’ National Mining Association with the support of the U.S. Department of Labor went to court and got an order stopping the implementation of even these measly improvements.
This was the final straw that convinced the miners’ widows that they must march. They are planning to rally in Washington on April 15.
The National Black Lung Association is asking supporters to help by joining the march or contributing money for the expenses of the walkers. Donations for the walk can be sent to the NBLA, c/o Tom Ellis, Box 632, Royalton, Illinois 62983. A web page with reports on the walkers is also available at www.knowareland.com.
Apr 1, 2002
Fifteen girls died and more than 50 others were injured in a school fire in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on March 11. Eyewitnesses said that some of the victims were crushed to death as they tried to go through the school gate which was locked. Girls’ schools lock their gates in Saudi Arabia to ensure “full segregation of the sexes,” which is the law in that country.
When students did manage to get out of the school the “religious police” intervened to beat young girls and to force them back into the burning building. Why? Because they were not wearing their veils and not covered from head to toe with their religious garments.
During the school fire, the religious police also fought rescue workers to keep them from helping the students–because firemen and paramedics were men, and, therefore, not “allowed” to approach women!
The religious police–known as the “Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice”–are ever present in Saudi Arabia to enforce Islamic law. They control through terror, and they take the right upon themselves to decide who has transgressed the law, and therefore who is to live and who is to die.
In Saudi Arabia, they harass women in the streets and enforce the strict dress codes as well as sex segregation laws. They often beat women who refuse to obey their orders.
Saudi authorities rushed to protect their beloved “promoters of virtue.” But their attempt to defend these thugs only proved their guilt. The interior minister, for example, said that the religious police were only there to make sure that the girls were not subjected to any “mistreatment” outside the school–which they sure were, by not letting them out!
If this barbaric incident had happened in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime, we would certainly see endless reports about it in the U.S. media. Happening in Saudi Arabia, however, it was largely ignored by the media. Just like the U.S. media have remained silent about the fact that the Taliban’s oppressive policies against women were carbon copies of those from Saudi Arabia, one of the Taliban’s main sponsors.
Saudi Arabia does not allow women to drive, work, vote, appear in public by themselves or without being covered head to toe. The Bush administration, this “liberator of Afghan women,” and administrations before it not only haven’t subjected the Saudi rulers to the slightest criticism, they have praised them as “good friends and allies.” And the U.S. has consistently used them as middlemen to sponsor other backward, oppressive forces such as they once did with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, and as they now do with the Afghan warlords.
The tragic school fire in Saudi Arabia not only indicts that country’s medieval regime, it also shows the blatant hypocrisy of those who claim to be the torch bearers of “freedom and democracy” in today’s world.
Apr 1, 2002
In China’s industrial northeast, tens of thousands of workers have taken to the streets for several weeks. The demonstrations were organized by laid-off workers, protesting unpaid wages or pensions, low severance pay as well as corruption among the bosses and the country’s rulers.
In the city of Daqing, an estimated 50,000 workers participated in the protests, occupying a building owned by China’s largest oil company, PetroChina, for weeks and clashing with the police. In this center of China’s oil industry, as many as 86,000 oil workers out of 260,000 have been laid off within the past three years. Many of the workers were tricked into accepting a one-time, lump-sum settlement in return for giving up job guarantees. But these workers quickly found that their bills skyrocketed because they lost subsidies for housing and health care. Most of them also have not been able to find work since privatization has been dumping millions of workers out into the street.
In Liaoyang, another center of mining and industry in northeast China, at least 30,000 laid-off workers from as many as 20 factories have been involved in month-long protests. The workers there were especially angered by the statement of a local political boss that there were no unemployed in the city, when 80% of the workers in the city were out of work. So the workers added the resignation of this politician to their demands and occupied the city’s government headquarters.
Several other workers’ protests were reported in recent weeks from different parts of China, where the government imposes a strict censorship on the reporting of such actions. Nonetheless, over the last few years, more and more such stories have been leaking out. The government itself reported that there were 60,000 protests in China in 1998.
Conditions for Chinese workers have been getting worse and worse as the government carries out a “restructuring” of state-owned enterprises. In the name of “reforming the economy,” the government has been closing down some state-owned factories while handing others over to privately owned companies. The company that operates Daqing’s oil fields, PetroChina, for example, was listed on the New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges in 2000 and has since been busy “cutting costs.” Last year, BusinessWeek magazine said that PetroChina was turning into a “modern profit machine” rivaling international oil companies.
Recently, China was accepted into the World Trade Organization–a sign of international capital’s approval of the direction China is headed: Welcome to the wonderful world of “free trade” and “market economy”!
Profits for a handful of shareholders in New York and Hong Kong, however, means layoffs for millions of Chinese workers. The workers’ anger is fueled by the sight of their managers and China’s new-rich cruising the streets in expensive cars. As one protester in Daqing said: “Those guys up there got rid of us to give themselves annual bonuses equal to our entire life’s earnings.”
The fighting spirit of the Chinese workers forced the government to respond. In Liaoyang, the government paid half of the back pay that it owed to 1400 workers of a major steel factory which was shut down. Another 1500 workers were told that they would start receiving unemployment benefits and pensions. And 13 managers of the factory were formally accused of stealing money from the company. At the same time, six workers, known as organizers, were arrested and charged with leading an illegal protest–leaving no doubt as to what the intention of the government is regarding the workers’ organizing. But the workers may yet have the last word on this question also.
Apr 1, 2002
Bush says that the United States is engaged in a war against terrorism around the world. But in Colombia there is widespread terrorism–and not only does the Unites States not oppose it; the U.S. is financing the terrorists. During the past decade 1,500 union officials have been assassinated by paramilitary groups, which are tied to the Colombian military. This is nothing but terrorism.
The assassination of union leaders at the Drummond Coal Company (a U.S. corporation based in Birmingham, Alabama) is a case in point.
Just over a year ago, miners at Drummond’s Colombia mine had been returning on a company bus to their villages. The bus was stopped by paramilitary gunmen. According to miners on the bus, the gunmen declared they wanted to settle a dispute between union officials and Drummond. They ordered Valmore Lacarno Rodriguez, the union president, and Victor Hugo Oracasita, the vice president, off the bus. Both were found killed. Last October, the new union president, Gustavo Soler Mora, was ordered off a company bus by gunmen. Farmers found him later with two bullet holes in his head.
Drummond is not the only U.S. company that has benefitted from the assassination of union militants. In 1996, Coca Cola allowed paramilitaries to station themselves inside its plant. These paramilitaries threatened workers with death if they didn’t resign from the food and beverage union. The paramilitaries burnt the union headquarters down and killed or had disappeared 20 union members.
Human Rights Watch has documented the ties of these paramilitaries to the Columbian military. The paramilitaries communicate with the army with radios, cell phones and beepers, they share intelligence, share fighters, including soldiers in the paramilitary units and paramilitary commanders lodge on military bases. The paramilitary units use army trucks, coordinate road blocks with the military and pay army officers for their support. And the U.S. is currently spending 1.3 billion dollars in Colombia, giving this to this military, under the pretext of a fight against drugs.
U.S. law prohibits military aid from going to security forces that carry out violence against their own population. However, this embarrassing trifle was disposed of on August 22, 2000, when President Clinton signed a waiver lifting these conditions. Bush continues to send money to the Colombian military.
Obviously, terrorism carried out to defend the interests of U.S. corporations is the kind of terrorism the U.S. government can accept. All the more so because, by keeping wages low in poor countries, it keeps wages lower here too.
Apr 1, 2002
Lear Corp., the world’s fifth-largest auto supplier, is closing a plant in Romulus, Michigan, that made seats for Ford’s Mercury Cougar. 170 jobs will be taken away.
Lear offered the workers a small severance package. But it was more of an ultimatum than an offer! Lear told the workers to take the offer–or else the plant would close in two or three days instead of in August.
Could Lear shift production that fast? Maybe, but it seems unlikely. Lear simply pointed a gun at the workers’ heads and forced them to choose their poison.
In this situation, workers did vote yes on the so-called offer. But a large 44% still voted no. They refused to give in to extortion.
Lear is a huge company. It has over 300 facilities spread over 33 countries. Last year’s sales were 13.6 billion dollars. And it is linked with Ford, a company wealthy beyond description.
Since Lear and Ford together took those workers’ livelihoods, let those companies pay the workers until they find equivalent jobs.
An agreement signed looking down the barrel of a gun is no agreement at all.
Apr 1, 2002
Michael Moore, maker of the film Roger and Me (about General Motors’ treatment of workers in Flint, Michigan) had 50,000 copies of his new book sitting in a warehouse in Pennsylvania, waiting to hit the stores the beginning of October 2001. The book, Stupid White Men and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! tells the truth about the dirty tricks played during the Florida elections that led to the George W. Bush victory. It criticizes the Democrats, too.
After the tragedy of September 11th, the book’s publishing company, owned by Rupert Murdoch, ordered Michael Moore to rewrite HALF the book in order to take out all criticism of George W. Bush. They refused to release it without these changes and planned to shred the copies already printed.
The author refused to make the changes and 50,000 copies collected dust.
In December 2001, Michael Moore spoke at a meeting in New Jersey and read from his unpublished book. Unknown to him, in the audience that night was a librarian who sat on the national board for libraries in the whole country. She let other librarians know about the book and about the censorship.
Soon librarians were organizing a protest for an upcoming publishing convention. Libraries spend two billion dollars a year on new books, and they let this be known to the publisher.
Not long after, the publisher agreed to release the book unchanged. It has been a number 1 nonfiction bestseller since its release in February of 2002.
It seems that the reading public is hungry for a book that details Bush’s crooked deals and shady background–no matter what billionaire Rupert Murdoch thinks. (Ironically, Murdoch stands to make millions more on a book he tried to censor!)
Apr 1, 2002
Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley’s new budget eliminates 100 city jobs. The biggest cuts will be in the Department of Recreation and Parks, with 45 custodial jobs to be contracted out, and city landscaping eliminated.
These cuts come on top of several hundred jobs eliminated last year including a good number of custodial jobs in schools and parks. In both cases jobs were out by layoff and attrition.
The budget goes into effect July 1, during the heat of summer, when parks are most popular with people of all ages. Baltimore has several potentially wonderful parks. But custodial upkeep and landscaping are critical if parks are to be pleasant, let alone habitable.
Mayor O’Malley repeatedly cries the blues that the population of Baltimore City is shrinking.
Well, the impact of budget cuts in parks and schools and city services–under O’Malley’s own administration–continues to drive down the quality of life for everyone in the city. Small wonder that people look elsewhere to live.
Apr 1, 2002
On March 27, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an undocumented worker who was fired for union activity was not eligible for back pay. This overturns a 1995 National Labor Relations Board decision that held that a worker without papers could get back pay, just like citizens and legal immigrants.
Jose Castro was a minimum-wage worker at Hoffman Plastics in Paramount, California where he worked as a plant blender. In 1989 he circulated union sign up cards to workers. The company fired him for this activity, and after all the legal procedures, it was determined he was wrongfully fired and was owed back pay.
There may be as many as seven million people working in the United States who don’t have legal papers. Companies like Hoffman Plastics are perfectly happy to make profits off the low paid labor of these workers, so low it’s often below the minimum wage.
Jose Castro was owed $67,000 in back pay for the more than six years that he was deprived of a job by being fired for union activity. This already says a lot about the conditions under which he was working–making only about $10,000 a year. But the Supreme Court now says, in effect, that he and people like him have no right to organize. And this gives a green light to corporations to hire more undocumented workers, pushing their wages even lower–and with them the wages of every other worker in the country.
The Supreme Court portrays itself as a defender of basic democratic rights. It ought to be honest and admit that their real work is to defend the profits of business.
Apr 1, 2002
At the end of March, the Public Defender’s Office refused to represent four prisoners in Baltimore Circuit court.
The Public Defenders Office says that each of its attorneys already handle more than 200 cases per year. That is about one case per work day. So, in reality, those who cannot afford to hire a private lawyer were already not getting very real legal representation.
But now everything is out in the open.
A defendant who is a cook at Taco Bell was told by the judge that he had to appear for his trial “with or without counsel.”
He couldn’t be more clear: criminals who are rich can pay a lawyer to get them off from any charge, while the poor, no matter what, if anything, they did, can rot in jail because they can’t afford to pay.
Apr 1, 2002
Gary Rusnell was one of the activists of the strike against the two major papers, the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, which began in July of 1995 and lasted nearly 5 ½ years. On Labor Day weekend, September, 1996, Rusnell was one of 50 workers fired for supposed law-breaking during a sit-in at the Free Press’ downtown headquarters. Rusnell was given his job back by the NLRB, a ruling which has been upheld by several lower courts and by the full NLRB (National Labor Relations Board). The newspapers appealed the rulings each time.
After one ruling in Rusnell’s favor, in December of l999, the papers’ vice president of labor relations stated, “Gary Rusnell will come back inside over my dead body.”
This March, the U. S. Court of Appeals ruled that Rusnell was illegally fired and was to be reinstated and given full back pay and benefits immediately.
Instead, the Detroit papers announced they would probably appeal this latest ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
That labor relations guy surely was speaking for his bosses in 1999. And they haven’t changed a bit. Delay is the name of their game.
Apr 1, 2002
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), charged with protecting our waters, land and air from poisonous waste, has given an accounting of the work it has done since 1980 using the Superfund.
EPA say that the money from the Superfund has paid to clean up 257 sites and “partially” clean up another 552 sites out of 1,500 originally on the list. The EPA admits that at most of the “partial” sites, the water is still contaminated and will be for many years to come. In other words, they’re still polluted–as are the sites which haven’t been touched at all–among which are some of the most polluted and largest toxic dumps.
So our land and water will remain poisoned by toxic wastes. Does the government propose to bill the polluting companies still more? Of course not. Just the opposite. In 1995, it stopped collecting any money from the polluters. The government itself, which since 1995 kicked in our tax money to pay for what the corporations did, is now reducing its contributions to this project–under the pretext of September 11th.
How many people will have their lives cut short due to the pollution of the water, air, and land near where they live? It is many millions more than the victims of September 11th. This government, which pretends to be the protector of the people, is not about to protect us from those who really harm us: big U.S. corporations.
Apr 1, 2002
Northwest Airlines recently announced that it was calling back about 500 more workers of the 9000 that it laid off following September 11.
After the attacks, all the airlines cut back on flights. Northwest cut its schedule by 20%. But the Northwest schedule is now only about 11½% smaller than last spring’s schedule. In other words, the airline has restored close to half of the flights it had cancelled.
It has not called back anywhere near half of the 9000 workers it laid off. In fact, the 500 re-hires just announced brings the total to only a little over 800, less than one tenth of those laid off.
What are they cutting back on? Maintenance?