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
Oct 6, 2003
The number of people living below the poverty line increased by almost two million people last year. There are now 35 million people, equal to the population of California, living below the poverty line.
When a spokesman for the Bush administration was asked about this increase, he explained that it was only temporary, due to the after-effects of the last recession.
This explanation, of course, is sheer nonsense. Why should the poor have to pay for the workings of the economic cycle and the recessions in the first place? The poor don’t decide how to run the economy. The capitalists do. The capitalists decide how much to invest and what to produce. And they base these decisions on their own profits, that is the narrow class interests of a tiny minority of the population. To protect those profits, the capitalists often disrupt the workings of their own economy. They cause enormous crises and ruin. But it is not the capitalist minority who pay the consequences. On the contrary, they make the majority pay for them. Or at least they try to do it–if the working class lets them get away with it.
But what is scandalous beyond debate is the fact that poverty exists in the first place. No person should be poor. The working class produces more than enough to have done away with poverty a long time ago. And its ability to produce is increasing all the time. Just look at how much more productive workers are than they were just a few decades ago. Today, for example, each production worker on average produces three times as much than just 30 years ago.
This means that each worker produces more than three times more food, clothing, autos, everything one can need. Just think about what we could do with that wealth if it was up to the working class. We could wipe out the scourge of poverty for everyone. We could use it to make sure that everyone could have more, and not just money, but time and leisure. Just think about what life could be like if we worked only half the number of hours–and still made substantially more than what we are making today. We wouldn’t have to kill ourselves to make ends meet. We would have more vacations and holidays, more time to pursue the things that make life worth living, more time for our families, more time to educate ourselves, more time to pursue our interests, more time to relax.
All that would be possible–even if the benefits of the increasing wealth that workers produced were simply divided up evenly among all the members of society.
Today, that may seem like a pipe dream. But only because the capitalist class controls the wealth that the working class creates. And the capitalists don’t share equally. They try to keep as much as they can for themselves. So the gap between rich and poor continuously increases.
While workers labor longer and harder for less, the capitalist class builds itself ever more fabulous and spectacular mansions. While workers are constantly threatened with job cuts and unemployment, the bosses buy themselves private ranches and hunting grounds, private jets of every make and model, more luxury skyscrapers.
And there is more. For no excess is ever enough for the capitalists. The biggest capitalists accumulate more wealth than anyone could possibly spend in several lifetimes. So they take the left-over wealth and use it to speculate. They try to take over other companies. They try to corner the market. They gamble on the stock market, in real estate, in hedge funds. In other words, they spend their time simply wasting incredible, unheard of amounts wealth, wealth that was originally created with the sweat and blood of the working class.
This serves no social purpose. It is sheer waste that mounts day by day.
The working class has every right to say, "Enough!" That wealth belongs to those who created it. The working class has every right to take that wealth back.
Oct 6, 2003
Following Rush Limbaugh’s resignation from his ESPN job on Wednesday, a story broke that he was being investigated by Florida police over illegal drug use.
Limbaugh, or the "moralizing motormouth," as one reporter called him, has implied that black people are nothing but crack heads. It turns out that multi-millionaire Rush was addicted to OxyContin, Lorcet and hydrocodone. Is there a special word when the rich are addicted? Cocaine-head? Liar?
Apparently, he went into rehab clinics at least twice to kick the habit–a nice benefit of being wealthy, since drug treatment is rarely available to poor addicts.
When Limbaugh was questioned about his drug use, he said "I am unaware of any investigation by any authorities involving me." He must have learned his style from those fine leaders of Enron, Worldcom and Tyco. Limbaugh doesn’t directly deny he obtained the drugs illegally: He just says he doesn’t know about the investigation.
Limbaugh’s views on many issues–black people, poor people, the war in Iraq, social programs, gays–are very useful to those in power. This vile slob has regularly spewed out the most disgusting, reactionary garbage.
Turns out he was also a hypocrite!
Oct 6, 2003
So Rush Limbaugh resigned from ESPN–to save the broadcast team at ESPN from further embarrassment, or so he says.
What embarrassment? Because Limbaugh spouted one of his patented racist harangues?
How could ESPN be embarrassed? After all, isn’t that exactly why they hired him, to put one of his famous diatribes on the air?
As an NFL spokesman put it, "ESPN knew what they were getting when they hired Rush Limbaugh." And it certainly wasn’t his knowledge of sports, which as his comment showed, is nil.
No more than WABC and linked stations kept Limbaugh on the air because he provided knowledge about the world and truthful information about the war in Iraq.
WABC and ESPN–both of which happen to be owned by Disney productions–put Limbaugh on the air and kept him there as he spouted vile reactionary garbage, including tons of racist outrages, demeaning sexist comments, near encouragements for people to attack gays, as well as lie after lie justifying Bush’s filthy war.
Did Disney and its stations do it as a way to make more money by shocking people or pandering to reactionary views in the population? Or did they do it in order to push Limbaugh’s garbage on the population? It doesn’t matter.
The fact is, they put this vile-speaking man on the air and kept him there for years.
Oct 6, 2003
Multimillionaire Robert Thompson decided last week to take his ball and go home, retracting his offer to donate 200 million dollars to create charter schools in Detroit. Thompson was hoping to set up charter schools in Detroit as part of a deal made between Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and state legislators. That deal would double the limit of charter schools in the state from 150 to 300 by 2013. Up until now, only universities could charter schools in the state, but with this bill, foundations established by so-called rich benefactors would be allowed to open them.
Teachers, unions, community groups and others put a monkey wrench into the plans when they came out in force to demonstrate against charter schools at the state capitol building in Lansing. More than 3,000 people turned out, including some from communities outside Detroit who are also concerned about the growth of charter schools. Schools in Detroit shut down because the teachers planned ahead of time to drive to Lansing for the demonstration.
Charter schools are a complete rip-off. They are a way for wealthy individuals, corporations, religions, and universities with connections to the politicians to drain public money out of the public schools for their own benefit or use. Even when a "benefactor" gives money to build a charter school, money to run and maintain it comes out of the public school budgets, but the public schools don’t control how the money is spent. There is little regulation of what these schools teach or how they perform.
The backers of charter schools claim that they are a way to provide better schools, but in reality they have not been that. One of the private companies that has won many contracts for running schools around the country is Edison Schools, Inc. Edison Schools have performed worse than the public schools in most cases and no better everywhere else.
It’s true that there are problems with how the public schools are performing, especially in the poorer school districts. That’s because most of the funding of the public schools is still left up to each school district. The wealthier school districts generally spend at least twice as much per student as do the poorer districts, and in some cases three times as much. This results in fewer teachers with larger class sizes. It means less money for books and supplies. By creating charter schools, the politicians are not addressing this problem, only using the poor performance of the schools as an excuse to hand more public money over to private interests, leaving still less for children’s education.
Public schools would never have existed in the first place if it had been left up to the politicians. The public schools came out of popular social movements. Public schools became widespread in the Northeast and Midwest only with the precursors of the union movement, when the first workingmen’s parties were formed in the late 1820s. One of the main demands of those parties was publicly-funded schools open to everyone.
Public schools did not exist in the South until the Reconstruction movement of ex-slaves and poor whites after the Civil War began to set them up. During slavery, it was illegal to teach slaves to read and write. Most poor whites were not able to go to school at that time either. Reconstruction established the principle–for the first time anywhere–that every child had the right to an education.
Public schools continue to exist today only because of the struggles of working people to defend them. The teachers and parents who demonstrated in Lansing have every reason to defend public schools.
Oct 6, 2003
The AFL-CIO and several of its affiliated unions, along with various church groups and community organizations, sponsored the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. On September 20, over 900 people, mainly immigrant workers, documented and undocumented, in 10 different cities embarked on a two week bus ride across the country, with dozens of rallies and prayer vigils along the way. The bus riders converged first on Washington, D.C., and then they went on to rallies in New Jersey and New York City.
Officials of the AFL-CIO said that the purpose of the "Freedom Rides" was to protest the "unfair treatment" of undocumented immigrants and to pressure Congress to pass immigration reform legislation that would improve the plight of the millions of undocumented immigrants. And they compared the Freedom Ride for immigrant workers rights to the Freedom Rides of 1961 protesting the Jim Crow laws in the South.
Certainly, the plight of the millions of immigrant workers without documents is absolutely scandalous and inhuman. They live under a kind of apartheid labor system in this country with no legal rights. They are often forced to accept much worse pay and working conditions than other workers. And, as several union officials pointed out, these conditions are used as a wedge to push down the wages and working conditions of all workers. According to Maria Elena Durazo, the national chair of the Freedom Ride and President of Hotel Employee and Restaurant Employee (HERE) Local 11 in Los Angeles, "Our cause is broader than immigrant rights. Immigrants are also fighting for jobs, access to health care and rights on the job–the same issues all workers are seeking."
Certainly these are fine words. Workers do need to be united and organized to fight for their common interests. The problem is that the Freedom Ride organized by the AFL-CIO only provided an excuse to organize small rallies across the country that were usually addressed by Democratic Party politicians and clergy with some ties to the AFL-CIO bureaucracy. In Washington, D.C. the Freedom Riders spent a full day lobbying 100 politicians to pass a few bills, as if lobbying were the means for workers to win their rights.
In the past, immigrant workers were only able to win any rights through their own willingness and readiness to fight. This is what has changed their situation. For example, in Los Angeles in the 1990s thousands of janitors were able to organize a union through a series of strikes and demonstrations under the Justice for Janitors campaign. Also immigrant drywallers were able to organize a union through a series of strikes and confrontations with the police. Of course, once the janitors and drywallers organized their unions through their own struggles, the union bureaucracies moved in to try to squash the workers organization–even while the union officials continued to claim credit for what the workers had won.
Rather than base themselves on the organized activity of the immigrant workers, the Freedom Ride was more like a warm-up for the 2004 elections. Once again the AFL-CIO bureaucracy is preparing to lend its support to the Democratic Party, one of the two big parties of the bosses responsible for carrying out attacks against the rights of immigrant workers and unions alike.
There is little or no comparison between these "Freedom Rides" organized by the union bureaucrats to lobby Congress and the Freedom Rides of 1961. The Freedom Rides of 1961 were not exactly an excuse to hold polite rallies hosted by local and national politicians. The Freedom Rides of 1961 were part of a broader movement of the black population in the streets that directly confronted Jim Crow. This movement did force the government to pass certain laws, such as the Civil Rights reforms. But it was not these laws that made the difference, since most often the laws for equal rights were already on the books. What the movement did was force the ruling class to tear down the legal wall of segregation.
If today the officials at the head of the AFL-CIO wanted to begin a new kind of movement to mobilize millions of workers to fight for their rights, they have the means to do it. After all, they already head organizations with millions of workers throughout the country. They could address those workers, along with the millions more non-union workers. They could call on them to carry out a united struggle, not just for immigrant workers’ rights, but the rights of all workers to a decent living. They could call for a movement to stop the layoffs and plants closings, the cuts in wages and benefits. They could call for an enormous counter-offensive against all the attacks of the bosses against all workers.
But the AFL-CIO officials did not even bother to inform the millions of workers in their own unions that there was any kind of campaign, any kind of Freedom Ride for immigrant workers’ rights, not to speak of call for the workers to take any action.
Instead, the Freedom Ride of 2003 was just another one of the union officials’ typical campaigns that mobilized no one, but only pretended that various supposed "partnerships" with bosses and government officials is a protection for workers. These partnerships protect no workers. They only grease the long slide in workers’ rights and wages, as well as union membership.
Oct 6, 2003
New Bridge Strategies, an investment consulting firm, was recently set up by a group of businessmen. The purpose of the new firm? To assist companies that want to do business in Iraq, including those that want to get U.S.-financed reconstruction contracts. Bush currently is seeking over 20 billion dollars for reconstruction in Iraq. In addition, of the almost 4 billion dollars a month the administration is spending on military operations there, up to one-third of this goes to private contractors who provide food, housing and other services for the troops.
What special expertise does New Bridge have to offer to companies wanting to get in on the "Iraq action"? Well, most of these "consultants" know very little about Iraq. However, they do share something very important in common: They all seem to have close ties to President Bush, his family and his administration.
Among the founders of New Bridge Strategies are New Bridge Chairman Joe Allbaugh, a Texas political operative who was Bush’s campaign manager in 2000 and was then appointed by Bush to be director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency up until this past March. Vice Chairman Edward Rogers was a deputy assistant to the first President Bush and an executive assistant to his White House chief of staff. Board of Directors member Lanny Griffith has been chief operating officer of Barbour Griffith & Rodgers, one of the best-connected Republican lobbying firms in Washington. Before that he was special assistant for intergovernmental affairs to Daddy Bush and later worked as his assistant secretary of education.
To most people, the situation in Iraq today may look like a big, horrible mess. But to businessmen looking to make a buck there, it’s looking better and better.
Oct 6, 2003
Appearing before Congress on October 2, the man leading the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq reported on what the team had found.
Nuclear weapons–none.
Chemical weapons–none.
Biological weapons–none.
Dr. David Kay, who was Bush’s chosen man to look for weapons, was forced to admit to Congress, "we have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile biological weapons production effort" or any of the other Bush lies.
Not for lack of trying. Kay’s team consists of 1300 personnel. They have already spent 400 million dollars chasing the weapons that don’t exist. Kay himself was chosen for the chief position not only because he had been a nuclear weapons inspector during the 1991-92 period of UN inspections after the first Gulf War–he had also supported Bush’s wild claims.
Now the team is asking Congress for 600 million more dollars. It’s true that a lot of time, money and effort will be required. After all, if they’re going to manufacture nuclear weapons that don’t exist, take them to Iraq to hide them and then dig them back up, it will take all of that. And anthrax doesn’t just grow in the wild: the team might have to get some from a U.S. lab and carry it carefully halfway round the world ... if they want to make it seem Bush didn’t lie. And do it just in time for next year’s election.
Oct 6, 2003
A new decree was issued on September 20 by Paul Bremer, the U.S. Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, and by the finance minister of the Iraqi Governing Council, the body created by Bremer to endorse the dictates of Washington.
Essentially, this decree opens the nationalized sector of the economy–by far its largest part–to the predatory appetites of private capital, especially to the imperialist corporations. On paper at least, practically all Iraqi companies, public or private, can now be acquired by anyone who has the means to do so.
This decree sets no limits at all on how much someone can own. Neither are there any requirements that they must reinvest some of what they get back into Iraq, nor that they have to give any priority to Iraqi suppliers. Even the taxes they will have to pay are set remarkably low: just 5% on imported products, and 15% on their profits.
It’s obvious that the pretext used to justify this decree–namely, that it would help ensure the rebuilding of Iraq–is a hypocritical lie. If there are imperialist groups ready to purchase (at low prices, of course) local Iraqi companies, it will be to exploit the Iraqi economy and its riches, and in the final analysis, the population. If they buy up these companies, it will be to take as much wealth as they can out of Iraq–to safer places. That’s why there’s no requirement that they invest even a tiny part in the rebuilding of Iraq.
In reality, this decree is more a political statement than anything else. Today there is no rush of imperialist corporations banging on the door to invest in Iraq nor even to acquire existing companies, not even with the reduction of taxes and restrictions. The political and military situation is already too unstable, making the risk too high. And the situation is deteriorating further. At most, these big companies are ready to provide services to the military, without putting at risk their own capital. For this, they are extremely well paid by Washington and London from the funds that were confiscated in Iraq. The American company Halliburton, for example, was hired to maintain the oil fields; while the Societe General was called in to manage the Commercial Bank of Iraq when it was created by the American authorities last April.
On the other hand, this decree is probably designed to induce some of the Iraqi upper classes, who have lived for such a long time as parasites on the state-controlled economy, to support privatization, encouraging them to acquire a piece of the official state pie. Already a number of the wealthiest families–tied closely to the old Saddam Hussein regime–have begun to win contracts and position themselves to bid on some of these companies. Even if the first to buy up the nationalized industries are Iraqis, this can start an irreversible process that will make it easier for the corporations to take over the most advantageous sectors of the economy later on.
Even if this decree remains mostly symbolic at this stage, it nonetheless marks the true objectives of the U.S. occupation. It announces, in the most cynical fashion, the prize that the imperialist leaders intend to offer to their corporations at the expense of the Iraqi population.
Oct 6, 2003
On October 4, a Palestinian woman suicide bomber entered a restaurant in the Israeli city of Haifa and blew up 19 people, including herself and three children. The restaurant is owned by Israeli Jews and Arabs. This tragic attack seems to have been the work of a young woman from Jenin, whose brother and cousin were killed by Israel three months ago, a typical example of how Israeli repression has aroused an entire generation to sacrifice their lives out of desperate anger.
A few hours later, Israel bombed what they called a guerrilla training base 10 miles northwest of Damascus, deep inside of Syria. First reports made it seem that no one was in the camp. Whatever the case turns out to be, Israel was making a show that it was ready to widen its bombings from Gaza and the West Bank to other countries, with all the explosive consequences that could have. It’s further proof that the Israeli government has led the people living there, both Israeli and Palestinians, into a real disaster and has no answer other than more of the same brutality that led to this situation.
We reprint below an article from the October 3, 2003 issue of Lutte Ouvrière [Workers Struggle] newspaper of the French Trotskyist group of the same name, which clearly describes this impasse.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Second Intifada, set off three years ago in September 2000 by the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the Jerusalem Temple, has caused 3,500 deaths and more than 25,000 wounded. Three-fourths of the dead and wounded are Palestinians, but the Israelis also have suffered over 800 dead and 5,000 wounded.
The economic recession in Israel has just been added to this disaster. The occupation and permanent war with the Palestinians aren’t the only causes. The Israeli economy has suffered a lot from the collapse of American high tech "start-ups," to which it was very closely linked, as well as the stagnation of the world economy. But the costs of the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and the occupation have to be added in, and they are enormous. The Israeli press has tried to estimate the cost. According to the paper Haaretz, Jewish settlements in the occupied territories have cost the equivalent of nine billion dollars since their beginning in 1967, and according to the paper Yediyot Aharonot the Intifada has cost the equivalent of 15 billion dollars, a considerable sum for a small country like Israel, which has lowered the standard of living of the population by 6%.
Today the unemployment rate at 11% is on its way to surpassing its historic high, and the budget which was just voted is particularly catastrophic for the unemployed and the poor.
At its origin, Zionism claimed it would create a country where persecuted Jews could live in peace. Peace has never truly existed and is further away than ever, due to the policy of the Israeli government. The Palestinians pay the greatest price for this disaster, but the Israelis also pay very dearly for it.
The Sharon government denounces the suicide attacks committed by desperate young Palestinians. But its entire policy feeds Palestinian terrorism. The policy of blind terrorist attacks led by Hamas and others is unjustifiable with respect to the Israeli population and even with respect to the suicide bombers whose despair it exploits. But it’s important to note that even when Hamas accepted a truce in the suicide attacks, attacks by Israel on Palestinian leaders immediately soared. The Sharon government, in reality, chose all-out war against the Palestinians in Israel. And Sharon is ready to pay a price in Israeli victims as well for this endless war.
For the moment, the majority of the Israeli population doesn’t see an alternative, and lacking anything better, follow Sharon. Nevertheless, the only alternative that can change this situation is to recognize the right of the Palestinians to the state which they demand, and to find the means with them to a fraternal coexistence between the two peoples. But in order to obtain this, it’s necessary to begin by getting rid of the government of Sharon and to break with its policy, led in the past by Labor Party governments as well as by governments of the right, which is the principal obstacle to peace and security ... for the Israelis themselves.
Oct 6, 2003
Workers at two union locals of Delphi, the parts arm of General Motors, voted down the new auto contract. As well they might! The contract will impose a two-tier wage structure, a drastic wage cut for new hires. But UAW leaders refused to show the details, saying that the terms would be announced by a committee–90 days after the workers’ vote!
In other words, the workers were made to vote without knowing what they were voting on.
Delphi workers also discovered that their votes were not to be counted separately, but treated as part of the total GM vote. This may not have gone down well with workers who were indeed GM workers before the Delphi spin-off. They were told they had to be a separate company when it came to "competition" with other parts suppliers–but when they vote, suddenly they are not separate any more!
One unit of Chrysler workers also tried to let their anger be known when they were told, after they had already voted, that the contract included a side letter allowing the company to eliminate 400 of their jobs. Two years ago, these model makers had resisted management’s outsourcing of their work in violation of their contract. The answer turned out to be simple: change the contract but don’t let them know it!
A fraudulent contract is certainly not binding. There are more than enough frauds in this one for workers to declare it null and void–by their actions.
Oct 6, 2003
As usual, before auto workers voted last month on the UAW’s proposed national contract, they got only a selected summary of the contract to read.
One of the items noted was a giveback to the companies of 2 cents an hour of each quarter’s COLA (cost-of-living) raise. The giveback means that at the end of the 4-year contract, workers will have lost 30 cents an hour. Each worker will by then be giving back to the companies about $600 per year, each and every year into the future.
The contract summary justified this give-back by stating, "Negotiators addressed the ‘legacy costs’ with a COLA diversion of 2 cents per quarter that will secure pension improvements for current retirees and surviving spouses."
After the contract was approved, a business reporter at the Detroit Free Press asked auto company executives about this provision.
Dennis Cirbes, vice-president of labor relations for Ford, said, "the UAW focused on improving the position of all the domestic auto-industry participants. We certainly appreciate that approach ... (the money is) diverted to Ford Motor Company. It’s not earmarked for any special purpose."
A spokesperson for Chrysler also told the reporter that the 2 cents are not to be restricted to any particular use. That is–it’s not going into the pension funds.
The UAW bases its labor relations policy on the idea that workers and bosses are in a "partnership." But in this case the "partners" didn’t even bother to provide cover for the union leadership’s lie.
Oct 6, 2003
The Spark received the following letter from a Chicago reader about the experience his elderly and sick father went through at the new Cook County Hospital, built at a cost of 623 million dollars and famous because of the TV program ER. He was sent by his doctor to Cook County to see a urologist because he had blood in his urine.
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When he called to make an appointment, he was told to go in person to the second floor to see a urologist. When he went to the second floor reception, he was told that Urology was in Clinic E on the first floor. He goes to the first floor and after waiting 20 minutes on a long line, he gets called to see what he needs. He explains that he needs to see a urologist. The receptionist tells him that if this is his first time in the hospital, he needs to go to register at the Fantus Clinic (across the street). He goes back to this clinic again and to the information desk to make sure he is in the right place, but there is nobody there to help. He sees a long line and other patients tell him he needs to get in line. After waiting for 20 minutes, he finally is called by the nurse. The nurse realizes that this man is very old and he needs attention fast so she decides to get him priority over the other patients and right away he is sent to a booth where they take his information. The nurse sees that this old man needs fast attention so she calls a doctor right away and as soon as the doctor comes, he recommends that this patient needs to go to the emergency room. He is taken to the emergency room and there, the nurse refuses to take the patient because the patient has to go through other procedures that the hospital worker ignored. The patient is taken to a place where he goes through the same questions and his body temperature and arm pulse is taken. He is sent back to the ER waiting room to wait two hours, then he is called to a booth and the nurse asks him why he is there. He is sent back to the waiting room for another hour and gets called to sign some forms. Goes back to the waiting room for another hour, then he gets called to get a urine sample and a blood test. He is sent to a bigger waiting room to wait for his name to be called. While he is waiting, another older man loses consciousness on the waiting line.
After one hour, he gets called again to be taken to the "Red Team." He is taken to a room to finally see the doctor. One hour later a nurse shows up and she takes a blood sample again and the body temp. Then wait. Later a doctor comes in and starts the questionnaire again. She disappears and later she prescribes a certain medicine and says that the patient needs to come back in three days to the "Green Team." The patient spent 8 hours and was not able to see a urologist. When he comes back three days later, he goes directly to the ER but has to go through the same waiting procedure, paper work and spend another six hours. He was seen by a different doctor, but is told that he needs to make an appointment to see a urologist. By the time he is told this, it was already too late to make an appointment so he needed to call the next day.
When he gets the appointment, he is told to come at 12:00 to the E Clinic. When he gets to the E Clinic, he has to register. The waiting procedure starts all over again. Some people cannot wait this long and try to take it out on the bureaucratic workers but the police are called and the police show up right away.
After spending 6 hours, the old man finally gets to see a doctor, but not a urologist. He is checked again, and finally the doctor talks to the urologist. The urologist gets upset and states that he cannot see a patient unless the patient has gone through X-Rays, blood tests and urine sample. It is late again and the appointment desk is closed. He finally makes an appointment, set for a month and a half later. Will he ever get to see the urologist?
Oct 6, 2003
The Michigan Department of Transportation announced higher fees for drivers’ licenses, as well as much higher fines for having more than six points for traffic violations.
Seven million drivers will now pay $18 instead of $13 for renewals. New licenses jump from $13 to $25.
Governor Jennifer Granholm says that the state’s deficit has to be paid off and these fees are one way to do that. In fact, it’s just another type of tax, but the type of tax that is the most regressive. It takes away a much greater part of the income of a poor person than of someone rich. Everyone has to have a drivers’ license. But $25 means a lot of groceries to someone on a tight budget. To a millionaire, it’s a joke.
Granholm took office following Governor John Engler, who gained national notoriety with his policies of giving to the rich and taking from the poor. Engler’s subsidies to rich developers, bankers and corporations were the cause of Michigan’s current huge deficit. Rightfully, the deficit should be erased by cancelling or rolling back those subsidies.
Instead, the new governor Granholm says and does nothing whatsoever against Engler and his policies. She resorts to the most unfair kind of taxes and fees, in addition to threatening state workers with layoffs and wage cuts.
Voters may have thought they were getting rid of Engler, but it looks like only the face is new. The protection of the rich goes on as before.
Oct 6, 2003
Workers from all six State of Michigan employee unions, along with workers exempt from unions, rallied at the State Capitol Building–3,500 strong–on Thursday, October 2.
State workers came to Lansing from as far as 10 hours away in the upper peninsula to demonstrate their determination to say NO! to concessions. Over a third of the crowd came from Detroit where demonstrations had already taken place.
For state workers who couldn’t go to Lansing, simultaneous protests were held in Flint, Bay County, Macomb County, Battle Creek, Benton Harbor, and Adrian.
Hand-made signs abounded at the rally, so numerous it’s possible only to capture the tip of the iceberg. Here are some highlights:
"Cut Top Heavy Managers, Not OUR THROATS"
"ENOUGH ALREADY. We Didn’t Cause the DEFICIT"
"Your 38% (referring to a raise state legislators gave themselves) is MORE than I make a year after 28 years."
"The State is Not Broke–They Gave $$Billions to Corporations"
"GOVERNOR: Take that shank out of our backs!"
A campaign picture of the governor with a Robin Hood Hat placed on her head had the caption: "Robs from the Poor and Gives to the Rich"
"Don’t Balance the Budget on Our Backs"
"No Concessions, No Layoffs, No Program Cuts"
"Civil SERVICE not Civil SLAVES"
"CAN YOU HEAR US NOW?"
One speaker noted the shouts of workers could be heard a mile away.
This protest came one day after the president of a smaller state union, MESA, announced that he and other MESA officers had accepted ALL the concessions that the state wanted.
They agreed that MESA-represented workers would accept "furlough" days off work without pay; doubled prescription copays of $30 on many brand-name drugs; and working 80 hours per two week pay period while being paid for only 76 hours for one year. State workers would then be given what amounts to an I.O.U. by the government for the unpaid hours.
At the Lansing rally, members from this union were invited to the podium to speak. They vowed to fight for the concessions to be brought out to the membership for a vote. Workers from this union discussed ways to prevent the by-mail voting from being fraudulently conducted.
The union president who gave in to concessions was booed at the rally. He announced his retirement the morning of the rally and did not attend.
Most of the speakers reflected the militant mood and determination of the state workforce. Not all, however. When a union leader tried to give a speech that portrayed the current Democratic Party governor as blameless, the crowd became audibly restless.
But when this same speaker began to say that workers were going to have to compromise, chants got louder and louder from the crowd, growing into a full roar, drowning the speaker out. What went up from the crowd like lightning was the chant: "Just Say NO!," "Just Say NO!," "Just Say NO!"
The militant speeches that came later reflected the workers’ views. But when yet another speaker tried to get state workers to agree to a "compromise" where the workers give up everything and the governor and legislature give up nothing, another wave of tremendous shouts roared from the crowd, "NO CONCESSIONS, NO WAY!"
After that, union leaders who spoke–even Mark Gaffney, AFL-CIO head who only a few weeks before was advocating concessions–were forced to speak out against them.
Speeches are one thing. In the end, however, each union leader will be judged by his or her actions and state workers increasingly understand they have to watch every move union leaders make.