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
Aug 11, 2003
Democrats and Republicans in California agreed to cut the state budget by an additional seven billion dollars, coming on top of earlier cuts this year in social programs, education and public services. State workers will give up scheduled pay raises, while 16,000 of them will lose their jobs.
In Illinois, the state closed mental health facilities and veterans affairs offices, while reducing funding to cities–which, in turn, cut funding to fire, sanitation, health, water and public works.
In Maryland, the Republican governor and the Democratic state legislature agreed on a budget that featured 3000 job cuts, as well as a 200 million dollar budget reduction, most of it taken from education and the health department.
In Michigan, the Democratic governor conspired with the Republican legislature to cut adult education and revenue sharing to cities–which will mean further cuts in fire and emergency services, in street repairs, in public health services. The heads of the two parties also reiterated their agreement to take 230 million dollars worth of concessions from state workers.
In state after state, city after city, it’s the same story. Governors, no matter from which party, declare their state is in the midst of a critical financial "crisis." Put them all together, and the state deficits are supposed to total 80 billion dollars.
The states don’t have enough revenue to pay the bills–or so they say–it’s belt tightening time.
Yeah, sure–but when they tighten belts, it’s only our waists that get pinched.
Government officials today would put Enron to shame, the way they regularly produce falsified account books. If they have such big deficits, how are they able to keep giving away so much money?
At the very moment that Michigan officials, for example, were demanding over 200 million dollars in concessions from state workers, they were offering to give Boeing 300 million. And what they declared the total state deficit to be–1.7 billion dollars–is only a tiny portion of the 15 billion that the state BRAGS it has given away to big corporations in subsidies and tax credits.
One thing is true: states have reduced their sources of revenue in recent years. There’s hardly a state which hasn’t cut taxes–and just like the cuts that Bush pushed through on the federal level, the vast majority of tax cuts went to the corporations or to the wealthiest tax payers.
Those tax cuts, tax loopholes, and subsidies to the corporations are what caused the current budget crisis. Without them, there would be more than enough money to cover all the supposed deficits that exist.
If politicians from the two big parties were serious about dealing with their so-called "budget crisis," they would have rescinded the tax breaks to the wealthy. In fact, they would make the wealthy pay more than they ever did. Right now, they don’t pay proportionate to their income. In Illinois, for example, the poorest 20% of the work force pay 13% of their income in state taxes, while the wealthiest one% pay only 4%. The same inequality exists in every single state.
This budget crisis could be solved overnight, by making the wealthy pay proportionate to their wealth. Instead, the states, one after another, are raising fees and taxes on consumption–the kinds of taxes that take proportionately more from the income of an ordinary worker than from the income of the wealthy.
It’s outrageous that the people who do the work should be penalized so more money can go to the wealthy. No more!
No state workers should give up a single dime in concessions. No worker still on the job should lift a finger to cover the jobs of workers who were tossed aside. City neighborhoods don’t have to accept cutbacks in fire protection, nor in schools. There are ways to create a big fuss over such issues and there are lots of people in every neighborhood who know how to do it, if they decide to bring other people with them.
Put the wealthy in a corner–and their politicians along with them. Refuse their demands.
Aug 11, 2003
Earlier this year, Los Angeles County’s health department cut way back on health care services for the poor and uninsured. They claimed their budget deficit was too big.
Surprise! The department now reports a surplus that is nine times more than what they anticipated will be saved by their cuts.
And the cuts were not small. The county closed 16 clinics. It cut 400 health-care jobs. It also moved to close a rehabilitation center and cut 100 county hospital beds, but those cuts are on hold because of a patients’ lawsuit.
In any case–look at what just happened: the county claimed it needed to reduce expenses, politicians made cuts that saved twenty-five million dollars–and then reported a surplus of two hundred and twenty-five million dollars!
Now that it has found all this money, is the county going to re-open the 16 clinics and re-hire the 400 workers? So far, not a chance. They say they have found other budget problems ... which will show up in future years.
Isn’t this all too familiar? Whether it’s a city government, a state government, or the national government, all of them claim these huge budget deficits. All of them say they have no choice but to cut services. Always, the cuts just happen to fall hardest on those who are the poorest and most disadvantaged.
And what happens to the money saved? It goes to those who don’t need it at all. By the billions and billions of dollars, the money is taken by the politicians and turned over to the interests they have always subsidized–the wealthy and their huge corporations. In California’s case, first and foremost it’s paying off the huge Enron energy contracts. It’s taking from the poor to give to the rich–Robin Hood in reverse.
Of course most of the financial manipulators are a little more clever than those in the Los Angeles County health department. It’s not often they are so bad at covering up the evidence!
Aug 11, 2003
Unlike every other wealthy country on the planet and many poorer ones, the United States has no laws guaranteeing vacation time or even paid holidays. As a result more than 20 million workers have no vacation time at all.
In many ways, Americans work the most and vacation the least. Almost one in four of those working in the private sector–not counting government workers or teachers–have no paid holidays. About one in five had no paid vacation.
In Europe, each country has a law requiring four weeks of paid vacation for every worker. Only one European country, Portugal, requires less–three weeks per year. In the U.S. those of us who get vacation would have to be at a workplace for about ten years to get that much time off for vacation. And not at all workplaces.
The Europeans have, in addition to vacation days, between 8 and 14 other days per year which are paid holidays for everyone. In the U.S., more than 20 million of us don’t get paid for any holidays.
While a few workers here get more vacation or holidays, the vast majority get much less.
The difference is not a question of wealth or productivity. The United States has the largest economy in the world, equal to the combined total of the economies of all the Western European countries. And productivity in the U.S. is among the highest, meaning workers here produce more goods and services in an hour of work than elsewhere.
We are constantly told that this is the best country in the world. It is–for the bosses. But until and unless we fight to benefit from this enormous amount of wealth our labor produces, it will not be for us.
Aug 11, 2003
This sick economy would get a lot healthier if every company simply hired enough people to ensure that jobs could be done right the first time....
Aug 11, 2003
In the middle of July, under the pretext of having no budget passed by the legislature, the state of California withheld immediate payments of 380 million dollars to child-care centers serving the poor.
When the state pushed women with small children off welfare it promised to provide adequate child-care so the women could work. These subsidized child-care centers were the result. There never were enough of them. And the quality at many of them was lousy. But suddenly, they were closing their doors, putting day care for 429,000 children and the jobs of 23,000 child-care workers in jeopardy. Parents found themselves between a rock and a hard place. They were forced to choose between keeping their jobs or abandoning their children during the day.
This "budget standoff" was nothing more than a game played by politicians. Now that it is supposedly resolved, with Democrats and Republicans agreeing on a budget, the child-care centers are supposed to get their funding back. But the weeks without child care already have cost many parents and child-care workers their jobs.
Politicians are good at making propaganda at the expense of children. They lecture single mothers not to depend on welfare, to get jobs and be "responsible" members of society. And the same politicians never miss an opportunity to say that they are all for "family values." All it took was a phony "budget crisis" to expose their hypocrisy!
Aug 11, 2003
The voters of California are being given a chance to dump a sitting governor, Democrat Gray Davis, in a special recall election slated for October 8.
Of course working people have many reasons to get rid of Davis. In the budget that Davis just guided through, the cuts in social spending are enormous. Over two billion dollars is being cut from primary and secondary education which will result in an actual cut in funding per student of nearly $200. Funding for the community college system, often the only gateway to higher education for the working class, is also slashed–while students’ fees are practically doubled. And Davis says education is his "priority"!
Billions more are being slashed from almost every social program: public health, MediCal, workers’ rehab programs, the state’s Supplementary Program for Supplemental Security Income (SSI), work training programs for poor children, etc. Along with these cuts come layoffs, starting with thousands of school teachers, public health workers and professionals and clerical workers.
At the same time, Davis is also increasing taxes and fees, starting with the tripling of the vehicle license fee.
So, yes, Davis should be dumped. But not just him. For Davis’s policies could only have been carried out with the support not only of the rest of the Democratic Party, but the Republicans as well. The Republicans are not in office, so they have had the luxury of slightly distancing themselves from these cuts and tax increases. But nothing could have been done without an agreement between the two parties–which shows how completely both parties represent the interests of the ruling class, that is the big corporations and the rich. Even in the midst of the recall, they agreed on how to cut programs which serve the population.
If Davis is dumped in October, what are the alternatives? There may be several hundred candidates running, including a few celebrities, like Arnold Schwarzeneger. But the recall election is dominated by the same Republican and Democratic parties. They both need to be dumped. So what if there were no governor–we’d be better off without any of them.
Working people can refuse to fall into the trap laid by the Tweedledee-Tweedledum twins, the Republicans and Democrats, the two big parties of the bosses, and refuse to vote for any of their candidates, including those, who like Schwartzeneger, pretend to be supposed outsiders.
What this election really shows is the glaring lack of any alternatives that represent the interests of the vast majority of working people. What workers need are candidates that come from the working class, represent its own interests and voice its opposition to all the government policies that serve the bosses. The working class needs its own political party.
That party may not exist today, but workers can lay the groundwork to begin to build it–and to change the situation right now.
Working people can direct some of that outrage that politicians want to divert back into another election into fighting for what we need where we are, that is to oppose the demands for sacrifices, cutbacks and concessions, whether it comes from the politicians or the boss, the government or the company. That will transform the situation right now.
Aug 11, 2003
The two bond rating agencies, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, took state of Michigan bonds off their "watch list,"giving them their highest ratings. Their announcement came just a day after Democratic Governor Granholm and Republican leaders in the state legislature together announced their intentions to get 230 million dollars in wage and benefit concessions from state workers.
In other words, Wall Street expects to benefit from concessions the workers give up.
One more reason not to give up a single dime!
Aug 11, 2003
The following article is a translation from the August 8, 2003 edition of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), a French Trotskyist weekly.
The military intervention which began on August 4, under the sponsorship of the U.N. and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), is supposed to put an end to the civil war from which Liberia has suffered for 14 years. This force will number a little over 3,000 men. Composed of troops of six countries from the region, dominated by Nigeria, it has a mandate to enforce the cease fire, to help maintain order after the dictator Charles Taylor leaves Liberia and to help handle humanitarian aid. On the other hand, the protection of civilians, which originally was supposed to be a part of the mandate of this force, was finally removed from the U.N. resolution–which illustrates the priorities of that body.
After 14 years of civil war, which have cost the lives of a fifth of the population, destroyed the economy of the country and condemned the majority of its inhabitants to a life of "refugees" buffeted around by the fortunes of war, the situation has become catastrophic.
The capital Monrovia, where many refugees have flocked, has been deprived of running water and electricity for more than ten years. A great part of the inhabitants have no resources or shelter. According to a surgeon with Doctors Without Borders, "thousands of people take refuge in schools, piling sixty into a classroom to sleep. There’s no drinkable water. There are one or two bathrooms for thousands of people. There’s no food." The deplorable health conditions have intensified the cholera epidemic. More than 1,000 people have died since the resumption of fighting, especially due to severe wounds caused by the bombardment, which they weren’t able to get treated.
What’s needed is to provide the Liberian population with means of survival, including a way to escape the hold of the war lords. That would certainly require a significant mobilization of resources, but it’s a small thing in relation to the means which the great powers have. There are only 3.2 million people in Liberia. But despite its humanitarian pretexts, this isn’t the goal of the U.N.-backed intervention.
This is not the first time that the great powers have had recourse to ECOWAS to impose their order over the region. Between 1990 and 1997, an 18,000-man contingent under Nigerian command was sent to separate the rival factions in Liberia, including those of Taylor. But instead of doing that, the Nigerian generals massacred the population, devoting themselves to trafficking in diamonds and rare wood, imposing taxes on shipments in the ports under their control and contributing to the multiplication of factions by creating their own auxiliary militias.
Today nothing guarantees that once Taylor leaves (if he leaves), his opponents won’t explode into rival factions. Nor is there any guarantee that the heads of the force won’t try to live off the land, at the risk of restarting the civil war as they did from 1990 to 1997. What’s certain is that the population once more will pay with its blood.
The corporations and the imperialist governments don’t have a problem with civil war. Dealing with a war lord doesn’t necessarily cost more than dealing with a head of state. On the contrary, and if necessary, warlords can easily ensure the security of the mines or plantations owned by foreign capital. The only thing necessary is that the armed rivalries don’t encroach upon profits by going beyond the territory or into neighboring countries, as is the case today between Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast. In this case, the great powers are ready to intervene, directly as in Sierra Leone or in the Ivory Coast recently, or indirectly as in Liberia today, to force the different factions to respect the imperialist rules of the game.
The fate of the population has nothing to do with this affair.
Aug 11, 2003
The following article is translated from the August 8 edition of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), a French Trotskyist weekly.
It is almost two years now since the U.S. army bombarded Afghanistan under the pretext that the Taliban government was protecting Islamic terrorists like bin Laden. That religious regime, fit for the Middle Ages, fell apart and was replaced by a government supported by the U.S., which exercises control only in the capital city of Kabul. Outside of there, the old reactionary warlords still dominate.
The Human Rights Watch organization just released its evaluation of the situation. It denounces the impunity of the warlords and the powerlessness–in fact, the complicity–of the government of Hamid Karzai.
Both inside and out of Kabul, journalists are threatened, arrested and harassed making it almost impossible for them to criticize leaders of the government, or the local warlords, military leaders and fundamentalist groups.
The Human Rights Watch also denounced cases of political intimidation and the arbitrary arrests of opponents, who have been tortured in the private prisons run by some political leaders. The military is accused of widespread participation in theft and extortion. And the new Afghan police force doesn’t dare intervene against these military leaders–even if it wanted to.
As was the case under the Taliban regime, the police and the soldiers battle and arrest musicians who play for weddings, those who watch videos or those who dance.
Of course, in a society that allows such arbitrariness and such violence, women are its first victims. It may be true that legally there is nothing now that prevents them from studying or from working or from going out without wearing a veil or without a male member of their family. Yet few do these things, because men, reinforced by the fundamentalist groups, threaten them.
This reclusive life has consequences on women’s health. They have little access to health care, often giving birth at home. UNICEF estimates that one out of every six women is expected to die in childbirth.
Life for women is most dangerous outside of Kabul. These regions are under the control of the warlords whose behavior toward women is not much different than that of the Taliban; at times, the authorities are the very same people who were in place under the Taliban regime. Women, especially those who come from ethnic minorities, can always be raped–including in their own homes at the point of a gun.
On top of this, there is the catastrophic economic situation and the perpetual conflicts between armed groups, creating a misery that pushes some families to marry off their daughters at a very young age in the hope of obtaining a dowry.
Bush not only pretends to fight against terrorism, but also claims to give the men and above all the women of Afghanistan freedom from oppression by the Taliban.
Aug 11, 2003
Bechtel Corporation was among the first companies to be awarded a contract for Iraq. It got 700 million dollars to repair the water, power and sewage systems in Iraq. Yet there is still no safe drinking water; electricity is rarely available despite temperatures over 100°; sewage and trash fill the streets in Iraq.
How is it that the dictator Saddam Hussein could restore services–and in less time–after the first Gulf War, but Bechtel with multi-million dollar contracts has not even begun to do it? It’s certainly not because Saddam Hussein cared what happened to the Iraqi population. It’s because Bechtel is simply using the pretext of providing water to rip off billions of dollars–just like it ripped off Boston when it pretended to be constructing an underground highway system.
Eight other companies have been awarded multi-million dollar contracts, not counting the largest one going to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root, to restore oil production. What these corporations have in common is not only their greed to profit from the destruction of the war. They are all companies which made their names in what is now called "privatizing," meaning they have experience in taking over public functions in other countries and turning them over to companies for the sake of making profit.
Massachusetts consulting firm Abt Associates has a contract for public health, a business it has conducted for governments all over the world. What Abt does is turn health care in poor countries into a for-profit business with policies favoring "market-oriented economies." In other words, only those who can pay will get decent health care. In Iraq, where jobs have disappeared, not many can pay.
Another company awarded millions to develop "local governance" in Iraq is Research Triangle Institute. This company bragged that it took research done by NASA, to "bring [it] to markets." In other words, research paid for by government funding is turned over to profit-making companies.
Governments justify their existence by providing services–not only electricity, water, trash and roads, but also health and education and research. Building this infrastructure is exactly what local government could do, and at a much lower cost than private industry, whose aim is to make a profit.
The specialty of Bechtel–like the other companies given contracts for Iraq–is ripping off the public purse to benefit the corporate heads–including former Secretary of State George Shultz and former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger–and private investors.
The war in Iraq has already cost tens of thousands of lives. That’s a price these companies are more than willing to have others pay so they can have a new field for profitable investment.
Aug 11, 2003
Information has come out about classified parts of the Congressional report on the September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. Omitted from the 900-page report when it was released on July 24 was a 28-page section about the role that senior officials in the Saudi Arabian government played in funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations and individuals involved in the attacks.
In what is apparently the most important case cited, a Saudi intelligence agent is said to have assisted two of the hijackers-to-be after visiting the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles in 2000. While this Saudi agent was briefly detained in England after 9/11, and questioned by both British and U.S. officials there, he was released and allowed to return to Saudi Arabia, where the Saudi government has so far prohibited any further questioning of him.
By itself, this incident doesn’t prove much. But the fact that the Saudi government is apparently protecting him and the Bush administration wants to keep this secret shows they both have something to hide.
The Bush administration is clearly very sensitive about Saudi involvement in the attacks. And it has good reason to be. The Bush family itself has many ties to the rich Saudi businessmen and government officials who are said to have funneled money to the terrorists charged with carrying out the attacks. In particular, they have had dealings with the bin Laden family that owns the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia.
In this respect, the Bush family is like virtually every other bourgeois family involved in the oil industry. They all have extensive business dealings in Saudi Arabia, the largest oil-exporting country in the world, with an oil industry dominated by U.S. oil companies.
And they also have extensive ties with the terrorists. Starting in the 1970s, the U.S. with the assistance of the Saudi government pushed Islamic fundamentalism and assembled and trained tens of thousands of guerilla fighters and terrorists. One reason for this was to fight in Afghanistan against the Soviet-supported government. But the other reason was to divert rising discontent in the population against the Saudi government itself. The main Saudi leader of these fundamentalists and terrorists was of course Osama bin Laden.
Even after the Soviet Union pulled out of Afghanistan and bin Laden officially turned against the U.S. and Saudi governments, he continued to receive unofficial support from many rich Saudi businessmen and top government officials and security agents. His terrorist apparatus was an extension of their own power structure. And since the U.S. still had close ties to this the Saudi power structure, it at least tolerated the terrorists. After all, the occasional terrorist attacks were not a threat to U.S. control of the region. And, in fact, the U.S. government just used these attacks as an excuse and justification to build up its own military presence in the region.
So, of course, the Bush administration doesn’t want to draw attention to the Saudi role in organizing and financing terrorism in the Middle East, especially since it would draw attention to the U.S. links to these same officials.
As for the supposed war against terrorism: that is just the Bush administration’s excuse and justification to carry out its own terrorist wars against the peoples not just of Iraq, but of the entire Middle East as well.
Aug 11, 2003
Early in March, the Mine Safety and Health Administration issued proposed rules concerning miners’ exposure to coal dust in the air. Since then, the United Mine Workers and the Black Lung Association have been testifying against the proposals, saying the new rules would mean a major setback on miners’ safety.
The proposed rules would destroy the standard on the legal amount of coal dust in the air set by the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, establishing a level four times as high. The proposal would substitute individual respirators–which work poorly, if at all, for equipment that actually reduces dust levels in the air. It would eliminate the frequency of dust sampling as much as 90% at some mines. The proposal would also allow dust samplers to be shut down while miners are still doing work, allowing coal companies to get away with what they want during these hours.
This battle over coal mine dust has been going since the late 1960s, when miners organized to fight black lung disease. At one point 40,000 West Virginia miners were on strike, demanding controls over coal dust. The result was the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969.
From that point on administrations chipped away at requirements written into the law. The Nixon Administration, which decided in 1972, for example, that it wasn’t necessary to sample for dust throughout a work shift. For the next 23 years the mine workers fought that ruling, during the years of the Carter, Reagan and the first Bush administrations. Finally, in January 2000, the UMW took the Clinton administration to court, demanding that it act. The Clinton Administration finally issued rules on July 7, 2000.
Cecil Roberts, the head of the UMW, said about them, "The rules are inadequate. Although they would upgrade the coal dust verification plans and make some improvements in measuring miners’ coal dust exposure for their entire shift, the rules undercut, and in some cases, strip away the protections miners currently have. For example, the compliance sampling standards would be eliminated. Miners’ dust exposure levels would be increased and the frequency of sampling would be reduced substantially."
Now, the Bush administration is picking up where Clinton left off–making it easier for mine owners to violate the 1969 and 1977 acts–condemning the miners to an even earlier death.
The miners can’t wait on Congress to protect their lives. The type of mass struggles that the miners organized to push through the mine safety act and continued direct vigilance in the mines are what can save miners’ lungs.
Aug 11, 2003
On Monday, August 4th, another gas fire broke out in a blast furnace at Rouge Steel, in the Ford Motor Company complex in Dearborn, Michigan. The Dearborn fire chief reported that it was a maintenance problem and that nobody was hurt. He forgot to mention that two days earlier a pipefitter at Rouge Steel had been crushed to death in another accident caused by a "maintenance problem." In fact, the whole Rouge complex is one big "maintenance problem" that has been directly responsible for a whole rash of deadly accidents.
What does this phrase–maintenance problem–mean? Ford, and its captive steel company, Rouge Steel, expect workers to tough it out, working with faulty and old equipment; they expect tradesmen to cannibalize parts from old machines or robots if repairs are made at all; they demand that workers continue to work, even when there are hazardous conditions; they maintain only skeleton maintenance crews, so oftentimes a tradesman works alone.
Ford’s maintenance is built around band-aids, rubber bands and bubble gum–as the trades workers put it.
That’s why there have been "accidents" one after another. Since February 1999, when the Powerhouse exploded, there have been no less than 11 deaths and over 30 serious injuries to workers in this complex.
To seriously address the so-called "maintenance problems" that led to these deaths, Ford Motor Company would have to set aside its cost-cutting "profit-maintenance" policies and re-invest some of its billions to make it a safe and hazard-free work environment.
That will happen when the workers make it happen.
Aug 11, 2003
Local leaders of the UAW (United Auto Workers) met during the last week of July to prepare for contract talks. The national UAW contracts end on September 14.
The meetings, in a posh hotel on Ford property in Dearborn, Michigan, produced a stream of "we don’t expect a strike" statements. A GM local president was quoted saying, "Most of the people here know we have to get along with the companies. A strike would be devastating to us and to the company."
Even a local president at a Ford plant soon to close told reporters, "None of us really think there will be a national strike."
There’s nothing like giving away your game plan to the opponent! But the top UAW leadership has devoted years to persuading its members and its local leaderships that the big companies are in fact more like partners rather than opponents. "Jointness" plans are everywhere. The union shamelessly joins in advertising the products of its "partners." The UAW’s website includes "Bargaining for corporate responsibility" in which President Gettelfinger praises the "legacy of fairness and cooperation between labor and management that has benefitted both sides."
But the UAW’s members–and its far more numerous ex-members–have little to show for this so-called "fairness and cooperation." Is it fair and cooperative when CEO salaries soar into the multimillions, while workers’ wages have lost to inflation over the past 23 years? Is it fair and cooperative when companies make productivity gains by eliminating tens of thousands of jobs and then force the remaining workers into a relentlessly faster and faster pace? Or perhaps it is fair and cooperative to exhaust workers’ lives in years of mandatory overtime, and then propose to chop their pensions and health care?
The officials’ anti-strike statements simply express the trickle-down policy they have pursued for decades. They claim that workers cannot do well unless their company does well first–but then when the companies do spectacularly well, the union does not demand that the workers’ previous concessions be returned, nor that the eliminated jobs be restored.
This policy of "partnership" has never been so open as in the years since Chrysler threatened bankruptcy and the UAW capitulated to massive job losses, plant closings and speed-ups beyond any living worker’s experience. Then, upon Chrysler’s miraculous recovery and its repayment of the government’s loan years ahead of schedule, the UAW’s "partnership" was limited to accepting as permanent all but a tiny fraction of the workers’ sacrifices.
With this type of "partner," Ford and GM rapidly received their own equivalent gifts from the union. Doubtless the union was trying to be "fair and cooperative." However, due to the great "fairness and cooperation" of the companies, the UAW’s Big Three membership has plummeted from almost one million in 1979 to 302,000–if you count the 50,000 working for Delphi and Visteon. Yet the number of vehicles produced today is more than in l979!
Due to the "fairness and cooperation" of the UAW, industry productivity has grown by leaps and bounds–as high as six% just in the past year. Productivity means it takes less labor to build each unit. The benefits of productivity growth could be a better life for the workers. If it takes less work to build each unit, then the amount of work on each job could be reduced. The amount of break time, vacation time, and days off could be increased. The wages could improve.
If the workers were truly in partnership with their companies, then the workers should get the lions’ share of the productivity benefits. It’s only the workers’ labor that produces any vehicles at all! But let us suppose, unfair as it might be, that the "partners" agreed to a strict 50-50 split of the benefits. Simply by receiving only half the benefits of the last 25 years of productivity increases, workers’ work loads would have been far easier, injuries less, vacations longer, wages higher, and hours worked per week fewer.
Reality is just the opposite.The companies–along with their executives, stockholders and financiers–got not just the lion’s share, but everything. Executives continue with multimillion-dollar salaries, perks and stock options. Their high-rolling stockholders continue to receive the dividends they have come to expect. The corporate waste and corruption continues on its usual grand scale.
No, workers are not partners with their companies, not in any sense. Partnership is simply the modern cover under which the usual massive exploitation of workers continues.
What can slow down this exploitation, roll it backward is the very thing the UAW leadership renounced in advance–the determination to fight.
Aug 11, 2003
First it was thousands of spent nuclear rods that didn’t show up when the war in Iraq ended.
Then it was tons of biological and chemical weapons that couldn’t be found.
The Bush administration was pleased when U.S. soldiers found two trailers in Iraq. On May 28, CIA officials loudly announced that the trailers proved Iraq was producing biological weapons.
Oops! In August, engineering experts at the Defense Department’s Intelligence Agency quietly admitted the trailers were used to make weather balloons.
Then there were the gold bars seized by troops after the war, eleven hundred of them. The administration announced they had seized a haul of gold worth an estimated five hundred million dollars!
Oops! In August, it turned out the gold bars weren’t gold at all; they were 64% copper and 34% zinc.
Bush gives new meaning to the term "inveterate liar"!
Aug 11, 2003
On August 8, the Bush administration released a 24-page report entitled "Results in Iraq: 100 Days Toward Security and Freedom." In introducing the report, Bush claimed that the U.S. is making "good progress" in Iraq.
Needless to say, the entire report is a complete fiction. It glosses over the absolutely awful, grim conditions that the Iraqi people have faced ever since the U.S. invaded, the growing Iraqi opposition to the U.S. occupation, and the continuing war itself. According to the report, for example, Iraq is calm (!) and "only in isolated areas are there still attacks."
Something else was left out of the Bush administration’s report: U.S. casualties.
These casualties have been downplayed not only by the Bush administration, but by the entire U.S. news media as well. By August 8, according to administration reports, 56 troops had been killed since May 1. In fact, 119–more than double that number–were killed. The administration doesn’t report so-called "non-combat" deaths. These include 23 U.S. soldiers killed in car or helicopter accidents–most of which were the result of enemy fire, 12 killed in accidents with weapons or explosives, three possible suicides, and three drownings. Hiding "non-combat" deaths may make Bush feel better; it doesn’t make the soldiers any less dead.
The cover-up doesn’t end there. The U.S. news media also almost never gives the number of U.S. soldiers who have been wounded. The official number stands at 827 since the war began, with about half being wounded since Bush’s May 1 pronouncement.
But unofficial numbers are in the thousands. Lieutenant-Colonel Allen DeLane, who is in charge of the airlift of wounded into Andrews air base outside Washington D.C., told National Public Radio, "Since the war has started, I can’t give you an exact number because that’s classified information, but I can say to you over 4,000 stayed here at Andrews." And, said LeLane, over 90% of the injuries were war related.
Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. was supposed to have sufficient capacity to treat all of the more serious casualties from the war. But the hospital reports that between the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has been so overwhelmed by the number of wounded, it has had to turn many of them away, treating them only on an "outpatient" basis while they stay at nearby hotels.
The Newhouse News Service reports, "Months after American combat troops settled into occupation duty, they were camped out in primitive, dust-blown shelters without windows or air conditioning." E-mails from soldiers in Iraq confirm this. Writes one soldier,"My soldiers and I live in sweltering hot tents. We have no air conditioning, very few fans, no buildings to live in and no running water or electricity..." Another soldier writes, "I do know there are people living in areas with running water and A.C. That, of course, is not us... although my colonel lives like that. As we crammed 50 soldiers into two medium frame tents near a pond of dead fish which was also infested with mosquitos and there was absolutely no field sanitation support for miles, he was living in his own room inside an air conditioned building, had his own king size bed, his own bathroom, his own refrigerator, and his own cappuccino machine. It was two weeks before he came down to see where the soldiers were living..."
These conditions are not just due to poor planning. The Pentagon now pays civilian contractors, like Haliburton (Vice-president Dick Cheney’s old company), to provide barracks, fresh food, latrines, etc. Despite the fact that the Pentagon pays these companies in advance, they just pocket the proceeds and the necessities don’t show up. According to one report, "Even mail delivery–also managed by civilian contractors–fell weeks behind." Groups of soldiers’ families have been organizing drives to buy and ship drinking water for their sons and daughters.
What is good for business profits is bad for "our boys," as George Bush often calls U.S. soldiers.
Another generation of young people is discovering what it means, really means, to be cannon fodder in one of imperialism’s dirty wars–like generations before them in the Gulf War, in Viet Nam, in Korea, in the world wars...
Aug 11, 2003
The population of Basra went into the streets for several days in August, protesting the terrible degradation of their living conditions.
Bush pretends that opposition to the U.S. and British occupation comes only from a tiny minority, or Saddam Hussein "loyalists," or "foreign terrorists"–sometimes more widely from the so-called "Sunni triangle," from which Saddam Hussein himself came.
Basra is none of these. Rioting by the population there gives the lie to one more of Bush’s wild claims.
The people of Iraq want the U.S. and Britain out of their country. They should get out. NOW!