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 24, 2005
The leaders of the UAW have agreed to give concessions to GM–the biggest ever!
GM wants $2,080 taken back from a scheduled 2006 wage increase. It wants retirees to pay–for the first time ever–part of their health care premium, as well as bigger co-payments for prescription drugs and a bigger deductible.
What’s even worse is a proposal that can lead to losses of future retiree health benefits. A set amount of money is to be paid into a so-called “VEBA” account.Want to know what that means? Just look at what happened to “VEBA” funds at Caterpillar and Detroit Diesel. The funds ran out and retirees’ health care was cut off.
Wall Street experts hired by the UAW support GM’s claim that it is in bad shape. The company just announced a third-quarter loss, bringing its losses to almost four billion dollars so far in 2005.
What baloney! The so-called “experts” hired to look over the books obviously missed 55 BILLION dollars the company has in cash and marketable securities! The experts ignored the huge salaries and bonuses the company’s top executives have been giving themselves year after year–even while claiming that GM is losing out to its competition!
And they never questioned why GM would want to give up control of GMAC–its cash cow.
So what if GM lost money this year? It’s still the biggest industrial company in the country. And the biggest capitalists in this country still invest millions of dollars to buy GM stock. They wouldn’t do it if they didn’t have confidence in the company’s future.
This attack is not just against GM workers or even all auto workers. When GM workers give up concessions, the cuts trickle down and everyone loses out.
There is a big assault going on against the working class today. Companies are in a mad rush to cut wages and benefits, to dump pensions.That’s what the airlines are doing right now. Threatening bankruptcy, airlines have gotten union leaders to agree to job and pay cuts. Of course, the courts let them also forget their pension obligations. It’s a winning scheme–or, rather, scam–for the capitalists!
We’re facing an attack by the entire capitalist class on the entire working class. And as long as workers try to defend themselves one company at a time, by trying to make their company “competitive,” as many union leaders claim they have to, they have no chance of turning the tide.
Don’t tell us these companies are in bad shape. The wealthy class that owns them is richer today than it was ten years ago–and the working class is poorer. Today the top 1% of the whole population owns 34% of the country’s wealth. This is a near record.
And now they want more–even greater profits and wealth–to come from the cuts that companies are making in workers’ jobs, wages and benefits.
There is only one way out for workers: to stand firm and say NO every time a company comes asking for concessions. If workers at one company or in one industry can stand their ground, they will show that someone is ready to stand up to the companies. That can encourage other workers to make a fight.
What better place to start than at GM, the biggest industrial corporation in the country!
Oct 24, 2005
While right wing Republicans denounce Harriet Miers as not being sufficiently opposed to abortion, Democrats pretend she might not be so bad.
Not so bad? She wants to prevent abortion. Just last week, Miers provided documentation showing she had pledged to support a constitutional amendment banning abortions.
How much worse could she be on this issue? The Democrats, who pretend to defend women’s rights to abortion, don’t have an answer. They certainly don’t defend women’s rights to choose.
Oct 24, 2005
Dozens of homes were flooded after two days of heavy rain in the Washington, D.C. area. Officials said the pumping station failed in Edmonston, a town in nearby Prince Georges County.
Angry residents demanded action at a community meeting. They had been told before when their homes flooded that the problem would be fixed.
An employee of the public works department said the pumping station keeps failing because it is old. The mayor said he had asked for funds to fix it.
If the White House were flooding, would they still be looking for money to fix it?
Oct 24, 2005
A dam near the town of Taunton Massachusetts threatened to burst in recent heavy rains. About 2,000 people were evacuated as officials worried that the river might flood the downtown.
The 173-year-old dam at Whittenton Pond held–although some wood from the structure washed away.
Officials said the problem is the dam is old.
Bridges in the middle of London, Paris or Rome still carry traffic–and they are much older than this dam. How strange that old bridges can still hold in Europe but younger structures threaten to break in the U.S.
Age is not the problem. Lack of repairs and maintenance is!
Oct 24, 2005
For lack of inspectors, abandoned buildings in Detroit weren’t condemned; for lack of water pressure, a fire starting in October in one building spread to three others.
The building where the fire started had become a dumping ground for industrial waste from businesses all around the neighborhood. It quickly spread to an abandoned plastics company next door. Propane tanks, old tires, and 50-gallon drums were soon engulfed. Neighbors said all the buildings should have been condemned long ago.
Firefighters were delayed in putting out the fire–because fire hydrants nearby didn’t work! And because of the distance to connect to working hydrants, water pressure was very low.
The fire was not under control until four hours later, and it smoldered for days. Thick clouds of black smoke contaminated the neighborhood.
While the city funnels money to rich developers and corporations, it endangers residents’ lives by leaving buildings standing, encouraging toxic dumping, and letting its infrastructure fall apart.
Oct 24, 2005
A baby burned to death in an apartment fire in Columbia Heights, a neighborhood of Washington, D.C. PEPCO (the power company) had turned off the power a week earlier when the mother had been unable to pay a nearly $500 electric bill.
She went, bills in hand, to the D.C. Energy Office, which can give low-income residents assistance with their electric bills. She was told that the family’s electricity would be turned back on in two days. The fire occurred four days later. Still with no power turned back on, she had apparently put a candle in the baby’s room. He could not sleep in the dark.
Every winter there are fires in this city and every city because people can’t pay their electric and heating bills. People light candles or use their ovens and other desperate and dangerous means after the power companies turn off the juice–with tragic results.
That baby–and many more like him–died because utilities run for-profit do not put the needs of the population first.
Oct 24, 2005
Detroit’s mayoral election is heating up, pitting Kwame Kilpatrick and Freman Hendrix, two peas in a pod, against each other.
What are the major issues facing the people of Detroit today?
First there’s the deplorable state of Detroit’s school system. Both candidates accuse the other of selling out Detroit schools. Both are right.
When current mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was a state representative, he helped then Governor John Engler to push through a “reform school board” that took control of the schools from the people of Detroit and put it in the mayor’s hands. Challenger Freman Hendrix was appointed by then Mayor Dennis Archer to head that new “reform board.” That board further gutted the schools, decimating the budget while handing money to their friends in contract after contract.
Next comes city services, which are in a horrible state. Both Hendrix and Kilpatrick, during their times in office, cut essential services while giving money to every developer who came down the pike.
Unemployment is another major issue facing Detroiters. Both candidates laid off big numbers of city workers when they had the chance.
And finally, there’s the long-standing conflict between Detroit, which is largely black, and its suburbs–many of which are affluent and largely white. Both Kilpatrick and Hendrix present themselves as standing strong for the interests of the people of Detroit. But both candidates have received the big majority of their campaign money from very wealthy suburban sources!
It’s no wonder that most voters in Detroit seem to be voting against one candidate rather than voting for the other one.
But there’s a problem with voting for the “lesser of two evils.” A vote isn’t recorded AGAINST the one candidate–it shows up as a vote FOR the other candidate. So no matter who wins, he’ll read it as an authorization to continue with the attacks that both have been part of.
Better to withhold our authorization entirely, than to let the winner use our vote against us.
Oct 24, 2005
Many people saw their gas bills jump up enormously last month. That’s even before the heating season starts–just from using the stove and gas water heater!
If there was any doubt about what home heating costs will be like this winter, all we had to do was take a look at our most recent gas bill.
And don’t expect them to reduce the bill–unless we put their feet to the fire.
Oct 24, 2005
In October, results for nationwide testing on students in fourth grade and eighth grade showed math scores up slightly and reading scores down slightly. President Bush wanted to claim the results proved the value of his education act, No Child Left Behind. “It shows there’s an achievement gap in America that is closing,” he said.
But Tom Loveless, a scholar at the conservative Brookings Institute, could not support the administration the way Brookings usually does. He said, “... reading scores were flat and math scores on the rise before No Child Left Behind, and reading scores are flat and math scores are still up after No Child Left Behind. It’s impossible to know whether [it] had an impact–either positively or negatively.”The tests have been given nationally every two years since 1992. They show that, among fourth grade students, 36% are proficient in math, and 31% are considered proficient in reading. In eighth grade, 30% of students are considered proficient in math, and 31% are proficient in reading.
When about one child in three is scoring at the average for their grade level, and two children out of three are not, the school systems are leaving the majority of children behind!
Until real money is invested in schools, for good resources and smaller classes and well-educated teachers, Most Children will be Left Behind. The rest is noise for political campaigning.
Oct 24, 2005
The driver of the bus that caught fire near Dallas, Texas, killing 24 people, is now facing criminal charges. So far, the only information released about Juan Robles Gutierrez was that he had a Mexican drivers license, not a Texas one.
What about charges against the owners of Global Limo, his employer who allowed him to drive without a Texas license? What about the condition of Global buses, which drivers had been ordered to stop driving five times in the last three years?What about charges against the Texas officials who didn’t shut Global down permanently? What about charges against nursing home operators, who had the obligation to keep safe the frail people under their care?
And what about charges against the governors of the states hit by the hurricanes, who never organized orderly evacuations?
Where are the indictments against all these people?
Oct 24, 2005
With great media attention, the Baltimore Harbor tunnels were shut down, disrupting traffic for hours last week. Supposedly the FBI had a tip about a plot to blow them up. Yet, by the next day, the four immigrants being held at the city jail had been set free. Apparently the “tip” meant nothing.
This game is a replay of what the FBI did in New York City recently. They gave a “tip” about a terrorist threat to the subway system. Then, after city officials ran around trying to act on the tip, the FBI announced the tip was not credible.
The Bush administration wants the population to support its “war on terrorism.” Could these scare tactics have anything to do with the fall in the president’s poll numbers?
Oct 24, 2005
The October 8th earthquake, which struck both Pakistani Kashmir and Indian Kashmir, along with the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, killed at least 53,000 people, left tens of thousands wounded and three million without shelter.
In the mountainous region where the earthquake hit, nighttime temperatures get very low at this time of the year. Freezing cold rain fell for days, aggravating the survivors’ conditions. Many face the danger of their wounds becoming infected or of getting diarrhea and typhoid due to the lack of drinkable water and sanitary facilities.
Hundreds of villages of the Muzzafarabad district with about 700,000 people are inaccessible, due to the destruction of means of communication, bridges, roads and even trails. The United Nations has only 80 helicopters to fly between those isolated villages and the high Himalayan valleys and the bases where food, water and medicine can be given to disaster victims. Only specially equipped helicopters can get to these high altitudes, and many more are needed. The U.N. coordinator of humanitarian operations said he was only able to “transport a small quantity of aid with the helicopter fleet.” He added, “Given the number of people to be attended to and the quantity of material to transport, we need an open road network with trucks moving 24 hours a day.”But the clearing of roads could take a month, according to the Pakistani official in charge.
Hundreds of thousands of tents are needed to shelter the homeless from bad weather. Blankets, camp stoves, fuel, food and drinkable water are needed.
While survivors’ lives are in danger, the helicopters and the enormous amounts of supplies needed are being used by the United States and its rich allies to control neighboring Afghanistan and to make war in Iraq.
What’s been done up to now is pathetic considering how much need exists. The population feels abandoned. “We survived the earthquake, but now we know we’re going to die of hunger and cold.”
The recent catastrophe of New Orleans showed that the richest country in the world, the U.S., wasn’t ready to face a great crisis. It wasn’t for lack of means, but because governments didn’t make a priority to prepare for such a disaster. This is all the more the case for a poor country like Pakistan.
There is a logic in the way public money is used in the poor countries just as in the rich ones. This money could be devoted to public protection, health, public transport, roads, bridges and housing. That certainly wouldn’t have prevented the earthquake, but undoubtedly it would have considerably reduced the tragic consequences. But all governments prefer to dedicate public money to increase the income of the wealthy classes.
Oct 24, 2005
Occupation: Dreamland is a new documentary about the war in Iraq. It was made by two journalists, Garrett Scott and Ian Olds, who spent six weeks in early 2004 with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, then stationed at Falluja, Iraq.
In November 2004, the U.S. military told the 300,000 residents of Falluja to leave the city, and then practically bombed it to the ground in the name of “fighting the Iraqi insurgency.” This brutal assault on Falluja was in response to a rising popular resistance there. Portions of this documentary give an idea about the reasons why people in Falluja were so angry at the U.S. occupation. Camera in hand, Scott and Olds follow the soldiers in their night raids. We see doors busted down, Iraqi civilians, including women, children and elderly, humiliated and intimidated in their own homes. We also see people getting randomly arrested, handcuffed, hooded, and taken to prison for interrogation.
Not surprisingly, these raids make the soldiers themselves uneasy too. Describing how it feels to raid civilians, one soldier says that if Iraqi soldiers raided his home in Chicago like that, he would pick up his guns and go at them.
The film also shows soldiers patrolling the city and doing what the military brass calls “public relations”: talking to Iraqis in the street through translators. During these conversations we see Iraqis complaining about the living conditions, the raids and arrests, and the military occupation in general. One Iraqi says: “Where is everything the Americans promised? We have no jobs, water, electricity, gasoline, but all we see is guns.”
In those weeks, shortly before the spring of 2004 when the rebellion in Falluja reached its peak, the troops are keenly aware of the wide rift between them and the population. Some soldiers question the reasons behind the occupation and mention the contracts awarded to companies like Dick Cheney’s Haliburton, while others say they would rather “not talk about politics” on camera. But on one issue there seems to be widespread agreement among the members of the 82nd Airborne, which is a well-trained, elite division: that they are not helping Iraqis and that the Iraqis don’t want them there.
Occupation: Dreamland is not the first documentary of its kind–Gunner Palace, released earlier this year, followed U.S. troops around in Baghdad in similar fashion. Still, this new film is interesting for showing Falluja in the process of an emerging uprising (once Scott and Olds even captured on camera a roadside bomb going off near the soldiers). One thing we see is that the revolt in Falluja did not have to be the making of “foreign fighters,” as the Bush administration claimed–Iraqis had enough reason to want the U.S. military out. The American soldiers, on the other hand, are the real foreigners there, and in more than one way–not knowing the city, the language or the customs, and carrying an enormous amount of weaponry and gear which makes them look completely out of place.
Even if in a small way, Occupation: Dreamland does something the big media has refused to do: give an idea of what it really means to occupy Iraq–on the ground and on a day-to-day basis.
Oct 24, 2005
After an Australian TV network showed U.S. soldiers burning the bodies of two Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan, the Bush administration sent U.S. embassies instructions for damage control. A State Department spokesman said that the incident, which would offend Muslims, does not represent “U.S. values” or the actions of the U.S. military.
That sure will be a tough sell. The soldiers burned the bodies demonstratively, precisely because they knew it would offend Muslims. Members of “psychological operations” announced the body burning with loudspeakers in order to anger other Taliban fighters and draw them out of their hide-outs.
And it’s not just a question of this one incident. By now it has become almost routine for U.S. officials to issue apologies for supposed “mistakes” such as bombing civilians, or for a few “bad apples” who are supposedly responsible for torturing prisoners. No one believes them anyway, because they apologize only when an incident is widely publicized in the media. Even then, they never put the blame on the higher-ups in the chain of command who make the policies and give the orders. And, most importantly, these policies and practices continue.
People around the world–including in this country–know all this. If, today, hundreds of millions of people around the world see the U.S. as an aggressor and “the enemy,” it’s not because of an occasional incident here and there. It’s because the U.S. systematically bombs, invades and occupies other countries. It’s because the U.S. government supports brutal dictatorships. It’s because the U.S. government tries to control the people and resources of other countries for the benefit of big U.S. corporations.
In short, what really turns people around the world against the U.S. is U.S. imperialism.
Oct 24, 2005
An unpublished U.S. Army survey recently obtained by USA Today shows that this year alone about 50,000 Iraq war veterans, that is, one in four, returned home with health problems requiring medical treatment. This is more than three times the total U.S. wounded publicly reported by the Pentagon for the entire war.In addition to many physical injuries, the survey shows the Pentagon has been covering up almost all the psychological and emotional problems veterans face. This year alone, nearly 20,000 reported nightmares or war “flashbacks.” More than 3,700 said they had concerns they might “hurt or lose control” with someone else. Almost 1,700 had thoughts they might be better off dead or could hurt themselves.This survey gives a hint at just how much of this hell the Pentagon has been covering up.
Oct 24, 2005
Eleven people, including a baby, were killed during attempts by hundreds of Africans to breach the 10-foot wooden fences surrounding the towns of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco. These deaths on the coast of the Mediterranean were headline news in Europe.
Tens of thousands of Africans risk their lives crossing the Saharan desert from the poorest countries on earth, trying to escape hunger, civil war and worse. According to a medical group at these refugee camps, hundreds of these desperate men, women and children die each year trying to get into these towns in Spanish Morocco. They estimate at least 6,000 Africans have died at the barricades in the last ten years.
Spain held the area now called Morocco as a colony in northern Africa for more than a hundred years. Even after Moroccan independence in the 1950s, a few bits of land remained under the control of Spain although they were on the African side of the Mediterranean Sea.
Now the Spanish and Moroccan governments have sent additional soldiers to Ceuta and Melilla; they have built ever higher walls; they have even used planes to shoot at people approaching the barricades. But as one refugee told a reporter, “You are not afraid because in Africa you have nothing....”A flood of human beings risks injury and even death at this one small point of entrance to Europe. Until recently, an emigrant who got through the walls would spend a short time in a detention camp. Then the person would be set free in Spain to try to find a job. For those who have lost everything except their lives, the entry into Europe seems the only way out of this unbearable situation.
The European Union countries are demanding that the Moroccan and Libyan governments act like guard dogs. A French minister offered to fund additional police for Libya to keep track of its immigrants. Spain has already expelled some who reached Ceuta and Melilla back to Morocco. The Moroccan government not only chartered buses to force some refugees back to their country of origin. It also has pushed some of these desperate men, women and children back into the Saharan desert without food, water, or anything else to keep them alive.
By direct or indirect colonial rule, the countries of Western Europe–Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Portugal–are the ones responsible for what has become of Africa. Despite the fairy tales about bringing Christianity and civilization, the European arrival actually meant forced labor for the Africans; it meant exploiting the continent’s mineral riches and providing food for the tables of Europe while poor Africans starved. The imperialists built roads and ports and bridges using African labor solely to aid their enterprises to transport the riches they took back to Europe.
Then these colonizers left their former colonial populations in desperate straits, lacking jobs, food, health care or public education. Independence changed nothing in reality. It was still the European states and their largest companies that extracted wealth from Africa. European powers have kept the so-called “ethnic” civil wars going, sending military aid and troops to one side or another in recent years.
The European countries talk of aid to help develop Africa. But not only don’t the rich parts of the world want to give the crumbs off their tables to those coming from the poor parts of the world; they continue to add to the misery created by decades of their policies.
Oct 24, 2005
A Nazi group from Virginia tried to march through a neighborhood of Toledo, Ohio, making threats against the black population of the neighborhood. Instead, they were chased out by people from the neighborhood. More than 600 people turned out to protest the Nazis’ presence.
The Toledo police marched against the protestors and were pelted with bricks and stones. When the police aimed stun guns and tear gas–not to mention clubs–at the demonstrators, the crowd fought back. They later set fire to a Polish bar in the area.
The original cause for the march seems to have been a simple dispute between two neighbors, a Polish man and a black woman. Disputes like these, over someone bumping a car or how someone keeps their yard, happen all the time in any city. A couple that lives across from the two described the dispute for what it was: neighbors who just don’t get along. But this dispute happened in a city that was changing, with black and Hispanic people moving into what had been a solidly Polish neighborhood. And that gave a racial tension to the fight–not to mention the fact that the particular man involved exhibited racist attitudes.
The man seems to be a bit of an ass. His neighbor’s landlord says he had run-ins with the man for 11 years. The police took a gun away from him for waving it at a group of children. He repeatedly called the police to report drug dealing and “gang activity”–claims the police never substantiated.
In any case, the Nazi group was contacted by someone about the situation and they immediately seized the opportunity to march, posing as the “defenders” of white people.
The march was clearly a provocation and so was the stance of the police. The police say the Nazis legally have a right to demonstrate. Maybe so, but not just anywhere they please. And people have a right to live in their neighborhoods safely, without threat of racists who openly support the violence of the holocaust. Police also claimed that the Nazis were only going to march on the sidewalk. So what? The same police are ready to arrest young black people anytime they find a group of three standing on a street corner! The cops arrested 114 protesters on the day of the march–not a one of them the dozens of Nazis who invaded someone else’s neighborhood.
The police continue to blame what they call “rioting” on the young people and “gangs,” which is a red flag aimed at young black people. What does it mean?
The young people stood up against those who came from 500 miles away to attack their neighborhood, using the excuse of “gang activity.” Older people from the neighborhood joined them. Together they made the Nazi cowards scoot out of town with their tails between their legs.
The “rioting” may have cost the people of the neighborhood something, but the people of the city, both black and white, are better off for it.
Oct 24, 2005
Delphi Chairman Richard Miller had the audacity to insult workers, calling us a “particular class of people” who are overpaid, while defending his actions to give himself millions, along with dozens of other executives–a very, very particular class of robber.
This vulture is like the bully who thinks he can get away with it. But everybody knows once you stand up to a bully, everything can change.
Oct 24, 2005
The UAW took GM to court over their recent negotiations. But GM welcomed the suit.
So what’s up? Legally a union can’t negotiate to reduce benefits for retirees; nor can a company unilaterally cut these benefits negotiated under union contracts.
This court suit is just a legal maneuver to get a judge to OK what the union and company did–to prevent retirees from suing over their betrayal of guaranteed “lifetime” and “unchangeable” health care.
Oct 24, 2005
For years GM has been putting its profits into its own financial arm GMAC (General Motors Acceptance Corp.) GM claims it sold the cars at a loss. And yet GMAC made big bucks financing the sales of these cars. In other words, it was a bookkeeping scam and nothing but a way to transfer the profits produced by GM workers into GMAC.
Now GM is talking about selling 51% of GMAC, so it will no longer be in control of it. Why are they getting rid of this cash cow? One thing is sure. GMAC won’t be liable for any money GM hasn’t put into its pensions or other benefit plans.
It’s a shell game. The wealth in GMAC today was produced by GM workers over the decades. It should be used for the benefit of the workers who produced it.
Oct 24, 2005
The state of Florida got approval from the federal government to transform its Medicaid program into a gift to private insurers, at the expense of Medicaid recipients.
Under the changes, the state will no longer administer the program, or decide what benefits people will get. The program will be administered by private health plans, who will take a cut off the top. They will decide what benefits people get.
The state will also shift its Medicaid from a “defined benefit” plan to a “defined contribution” plan. That means that the state will set a yearly money cap on every adult in the plan. Once that money is gone, that person will be out of benefits–and out of luck–until the next year.
And, finally, the Florida plan will include co-pays and premiums. When a couple of other states, Minnesota and Oregon, started co-pays and premiums, their Medicaid enrollment dropped by half. The people enrolled in Medicaid are so cash-strapped that even six-dollar-per-month premiums and three-dollar-per-prescription co-pays had a huge impact.
Who are the people thus harmed? The elderly poor, the disabled, children, mothers with infants, the so-called “working poor.” Florida’s wealthy politicians have tossed them to the wolves!
Other states are watching eagerly to see what they can get away with.
Oct 24, 2005
Lashaun Harris, a 23-year-old mother from Oakland, has apparently thrown her three young children, between the ages of one and six, to their deaths into San Francisco Bay.
Relatives and other people who knew Harris all agree that she was a loving and protective mother. But she was struggling to raise her children alone after her separation from the children’s father, who was abusive. Harris was a nurse’s aid but she hadn’t been able to work lately, probably because of mental illness. With her children, she was staying at a Salvation Army homeless shelter in Oakland. With no one to monitor her there, she had stopped taking medication for schizophrenia.
Media reports either present Harris as a cold-blooded killer or someone with mental illness, painting a picture of a tragedy that was unavoidable.
That’s nothing but hypocrisy! Harris was aware of her mental illness and looking for help. According to her uncle, Avery Garrett, Harris recently tried to be admitted to a mental health facility, but she was rejected. She didn’t have health insurance. And, of course, California, like states across the country, has effectively closed down most state mental health facilities.
Whatever the exact reasons were in this case, what’s certain is that such services are becoming less and less available for working-class and poor people. Federal, state and local governments are cutting social services right and left as more people need them, and as the government funnels more and more money to the corporations and rich.
Harris may have been a desperate mother who, in a fit of madness, killed her own children. But she was a mother who “had been crying out for help,” according to her uncle. This capitalist society was deaf to her pleas. These three young children, along with their mother, are among its unnumbered victims.
Oct 24, 2005
The agreement between GM and UAW leaders includes some kind of “defined contribution” or VEBA plan to cover health care costs. It’s not clear who it covers and what it means since the two “partners” who negotiated it aren’t saying. But anyone who has a question about how well that works can just look at what happened at Detroit Diesel.Detroit Diesel just announced that retirees will be paying huge health care premiums beginning in January. Apparently the UAW International and the company made a deal 12 years ago in 1993 that would limit how much the company would have to spend on medical benefits for its retirees.
Then, too, they called it a VEBA plan without saying what it meant. Today, unfortunately, workers are being hit with the reality of this plan. The company says it has spent all the money and that retirees will now have to pay!No wonder they didn’t explain the significance of this backroom deal to Detroit Diesel workers!
And what about those at GM?