the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Apr 18, 2011
Fresh off a 2011 budget deal that includes cuts to almost every imaginable domestic program–to education, environment, health, transportation, everything but the military and corporations–Democrats and Republicans are already planning a much bigger set of attacks in the 2012 budget, the likes of which we’ve never seen before.
The 2011 budget was six months late in passing because the Democrats didn’t want to take all the blame for the cuts back in October. Instead, they waited until after the election, when they could share blame with the Republicans.
And boy, did they cut. For all the talk about brinkmanship and almost shutting down the government, for all the talk about refusing to allow attacks on benefits, Obama and the Democrats gave up everything the Republicans had demanded and more. They had already agreed to 42 billion dollars in reductions. And then, in this latest agreement, they added another 38 billion to cut from the budget. In other words, this was the Democrats’ “compromise”–when the Republicans demanded 70 billion dollars in cuts, the Democrats gave a total of 80 billion!
The latest proposals, for the 2012 budget, are even worse–from both Democrats AND Republicans. Now they’re both targeting the big-ticket “mandates” of Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
The Republican proposal, outlined by Rep. Paul Ryan, is awful. It would outright dismantle Medicare and Medicaid, while slashing Social Security–all while giving even more tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations.
Obama’s proposal, though, is also a huge attack. It also includes cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. And, while Obama did not say he would cut Social Security, he made it clear he was open to negotiating on that.
Obama did say that he wants to raise taxes on the rich. Haven’t we heard that before? He said during his 2008 election campaign that he would increase taxes on the wealthy, and he kept saying it all last fall–right up to the moment when he agreed to renew expiring “temporary” tax breaks for the wealthy. So why should we believe him now?
The “Gang of Six,” a group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers, has put forth its own proposal: supposedly in the middle between the Ryan proposal and the Obama proposal.
This is all being presented as a debate between right and left. NO. A true left-wing, defending the interest of the working class, is not even represented in these proposals. Instead, we’re presented with a choice between an extreme right-wing attack and two slightly less extreme right-wing attacks–but every one of them an attack on the working class.
If ever there was a time for the government to be spending massively on social programs and jobs programs for the population, this is it, in the midst of the worst depression since the Great Depression. If ever there was a time for the government to massively take from the rich to pay for such programs, this is it.
Instead, all proposals for the budget do exactly the opposite: they continue to plan massive attacks on the working population, the poor and the elderly, to pay for massive gifts to the banks, the corporations and the wealthy.
They’re using this crisis to turn the calendar back 80 years–and take away every social safety net workers fought for in the past.
It’s time for the working class to push the clock forward.
Apr 18, 2011
Last year GE made profits of 14 billion dollars. Not only did GE pay no taxes last year–or the previous year–it stored up tax credits to be used in the future. If its tax lawyers or accountants slip up and show GE owing taxes, the credit will be there for them to use.
GE is hardly alone in benefitting from how the tax code is written. ExxonMobil paid no taxes on profits of 19 billion and the IRS gave them a check for 150 million dollars. Bank of America made 4.4 billion in profits last year, paid no taxes on it, and got about two billion dollars from the IRS–in addition to a bailout worth nearly one trillion dollars. Citigroup made four billion dollars in profits but paid no federal income taxes last year.
So it goes, with a little help from their friends in Congress. Legal thievery! There is no budget deficit. There is an honesty deficit!
Apr 18, 2011
Last November, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published a study which showed that one in seven Medicare patients is injured due to medical errors and infections acquired in hospitals. About 180,000 Medicare patients die of such injuries each year!
This is a truly shocking figure. And it’s a direct result of health care companies that try to cut costs, including staffing, to increase profit.
Apr 18, 2011
A Republican senator claimed 90% of what Planned Parenthood did was abortion services during the budget debate. (The actual figure is 3%.)
But a statement later released by Senator Kyl’s office “clarified” that “his remark was not intended to be a factual statement.”
Most people call this lying and teach children not to do it. But this was, after all, a politician in the U.S. Senate, where telling lies is part of the job.
Apr 18, 2011
In 2010, CEO pay and benefits rose again so that their average “income” was more than eight and a half million dollars. These poor guys are getting by on only $4,200 per hour.
But that’s only an average and some made far more. The top prizes go to the heads of Viacom, the media company, and Occidental Petroleum. Those two raked off 84 million and 76 million dollars.
This is what the politicians mean when they say the recession is over!
Apr 18, 2011
El Camino Real High School, which boasts top test scores as well as many athletic awards, is leaving the supervision of the Los Angeles school district to become a charter school. And the L.A. school board has approved the move–quickly and quietly, without any discussion.
But why would a successful public school want to change the setup that has obviously worked for it?
“This is not about having any animosity with the district ... this is a financial decision,” explained the school’s principal, Dave Fehte.
School officials say becoming an independently run charter school is the only way they can rehire some of the staff they have been losing due to state budget cuts. And that’s because, under the formulas used for charters, El Camino Real would get at least $415,000 more in state funding next year if it becomes a charter school.
Charter schools are schools that are run privately, but funded publicly. In other words, the same California politicians, who have been cutting the money for schools drastically, are giving MORE money to public schools that agree to submit themselves to private management–including the management of a for-profit company!
This is a conscious policy for state politicians to hand out public money to private interests on the one hand, and weaken the public school system on the other.
Students who need extra attention will be the ones hit hardest. Charter companies avoid taking certain students–namely students who are not likely to score high on standardized tests, such as students from poor, working-class families, as well as students with certain disabilities. Charter schools have been allowed to pick and choose their students–a luxury public schools don’t have.
This is a reckless attack on public schools–and workers’ children who depend on them. Like the endless layoffs, like the wage cuts, like the cuts in government services, it’s another expression of the vicious class war waged by the bosses against the working class.
Apr 18, 2011
“We can’t let money stand in the way of safety,” claimed the lying secretary of the Transportation Department, who oversees the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). After several recent incidents in which controllers in air towers were found asleep on the job, the head of the FAA resigned.
For decades, the FAA has reduced the number of air traffic controllers. Controllers, responsible for the safety of every person on every plane, are expected to go from day shift to night shift to afternoon shift. These rotating shifts are known to cause sleep disturbances, if not worse problems. Sometimes controllers work what they call “the rattler”–eight hours of work, then supposedly eight hours of sleep and an immediate return to work. It really means they come to work over and over again deprived of sleep.
For more than 20 years, scientists have pointed out that swing shifts are detrimental to health and ability to do a job. More than 20 years ago, scientists at NASA pointed out that airplane pilots are more alert after they are allowed to take naps.
Every head of the FAA, since Ronald Reagan fired all air traffic controllers in 1981, has acted to push more work on fewer controllers.
This is the cause of these near disasters–and real ones to come–not one little scape-goated official.
Apr 18, 2011
More than 12,000 properties are about to be auctioned in Baltimore City for unpaid taxes or unpaid water bills. The taxes owed are a few thousand dollars, which is a very good price to buy a house. Investors line up to get these properties on the cheap, knowing they will make a big profit in the future.
Some of the houses in the auction are homeowners behind only a few hundred dollars on their water bills. Yes, in Baltimore more than 200 homeowners lost their homes due to unpaid water bills, some for as little as $250.
The politicians bemoan the fact that 20% of Baltimore residents are living in poverty and 30,000 houses are already vacant. Well, the politicians helped create this horror!
Apr 18, 2011
The Census found that Detroit lost 25% of its population since 2000. So what–or who–caused the mass exodus from the city?
The banks, first of all. They foreclosed viciously on residents’ homes. In 1996, Detroit had the lowest foreclosure rate of any metropolitan area in the country. By 2010, the city had the third highest number of foreclosures. The banks had pushed subprime loans in Detroit–regardless of people’s credit standing. These loans carry interest rates at least 3% above standard rates, leading most of the time to default. Eighty-seven% of black mortgage recipients in 2006 in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, were sold subprime loans. Detroit has gone from a city that once had one of the highest rates of home-ownership to one having the lowest ownership rate for single family homes of the 20 largest cities in the country.
The banks have foreclosed on so many homes it has forced people to double or quadruple up. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands are living in makeshift housing not counted by the census taker. That’s where people went. And they went to other cities, to the suburbs and down South, because the City of Detroit government and the School Board forced them out. The city closed so many neighborhood schools, who can even find a school for their kids to attend? Add to that the closure of city rec centers, neighborhood city halls, police mini-stations and health centers and it hardly makes the city an attractive place to live.
And now the city is threatening to close off whole neighborhoods if people refuse to move. The city will shut off street lighting, the water system, and garbage pickup.
They do that already! Whole areas of the city go a month at a time without street lighting. When a water pipe breaks, it can take months for the city to fix it. Already garbage pickup is missed every few weeks or so. People who wanted to live in the city they grew up in were driven out!
The politicians and the banks have destroyed a working class city in order to hand the land over to the developers, speculators and–through gentrification–to the wealthy.
Today, Detroit seems almost like a city in the Third World.
Apr 18, 2011
The attack on abortion rights has been intensifying. On Wednesday, April 13, the governor of Kansas signed into law two new anti-abortion measures. One bill requires girls age 17 and under to get parents to sign for the abortion–in front of a notary. The second bill bans abortion half way through the second trimester.
So far in 2011, there have been 573 bills introduced in state legislatures around the country restricting abortion rights in one way or another. More than 120 bills have already passed at least one chamber of the legislature.
A recent “compromise” made by President Obama allowed a rider to the Federal Budget bill that bans federal funding for abortions in Washington, D.C.
After the 1973 Supreme Court Ruling of Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion, attempts to restrict this right began. In 1976 the Hyde Amendment banned Medicaid funding for abortion and the attacks have continued ever since, accelerating recently.
Yet opinion polls in the U.S. regularly show that about 58% of the U.S. population says that Roe v. Wade was a good thing.
How insane that women are having to fight all over again just to have reproductive choices and life choices beyond what our grandmothers used to call “being kept barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen.”
Apr 18, 2011
In April of 1941, workers struck the huge Ford empire, shutting it down completely.
Before the strike at Ford, workers had fought a number of major battles at other companies, especially in the industrial Midwest. Ford was a bitter holdout to the end–the last of the major auto companies to be organized. But when it was finally organized, the victory at Ford cemented this fact: Industrial workers had imposed their decision to have a union on the whole capitalist class.
Ford workers took on a corporation fully committed to preventing any unionization.
Henry Ford set up a special division to set up links with churches. Those ministers who used their influence against union organizing received contributions from Ford and could get their parishioners hired on at Ford. Ministers who refused to agree to Ford’s anti-union pledge saw their parishioners excluded from Ford jobs.
This was especially important in the black community given the severe racism of the time, which meant that few black workers were hired in the big plants. Ford was something of an exception.
By 1941, Ford employed more than half the black workers who worked in auto. They represented 11.5% of the Ford work force. A small number of them were even in the skilled trades.
Ford took over the community of Inkster, near the Rouge plant. He put in plumbing, a sewage system and electricity. The houses were painted and repaired. Then it was turned into an enclave for a few of the black workers from Rouge and their families. None of this cost Ford much, but it let him appear as a benefactor in the black community.
Of course, most black workers were still relegated to the worst jobs. Inkster was in worse shape than the tracts of houses for white Rouge workers that Ford put up in Dearborn. And while Ford took credit for Inkster and Dearborn improvements, the few workers “lucky” enough to buy one of these ended up taking home only 12 cents an hour–the rest was deducted by Ford to pay for the work that had been done.
Ford expected his paternalistic innovations to gain him the undying support of black workers.
At the same time, he assumed that the slightly better situation of the white workers in contrast to the black workers would cement the loyalty of the whites to him.
This whole divide-and-conquer policy was a kind of insurance policy for Ford, which he hoped would counteract the abysmal working conditions, which gave all workers plenty of reason to organize.
Ford also employed an extensive army of spies and enforcers. And he had the support of the police and city officials in Dearborn, where the giant Ford Rouge complex is located.
Ford had both uniformed and private police, a 3000-strong Ford Service Department. Outside the plant, Ford Service depended on its links with area gangsters, as well as the Black Legion, to attack union organizers. The Black Legion, a northern offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan, killed dozens of unionists in southeastern Michigan during this period, and maimed many hundreds more. Violence and intimidation were the rule at the Rouge.
Anyone suspected of union activity was fired on the spot. Between 1937 and 1941, more than 4,000 workers were fired from Ford plants.
And all of this took place in the midst of the decades-long Great Depression with high unemployment and vicious speed-up in the plants.
The Organizing Campaign Begins
In 1940, the newly organized UAW began a major campaign at Ford carried on in part by union militants from GM and Chrysler, who had been part of the successful sit-down fights there, and by fired Ford activists. They canvassed house to house to find Ford workers to discuss with.
But of course the most important organizing took place inside the plant, done by the Ford workers themselves. Signs of that organization could be seen everywhere. Workers on the line set radio buttons in the cars to the union station. They put leaflets under the window glass or in the bathrooms. Union literature appeared not only in English but also in Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, and Italian.
Militants from the Communist Party played the key role in this organizing drive. By 1938, the Michigan Communist Party had 2600 members, 750 in auto. The most active ones were in auto with several hundred active CP militants at the Rouge.
The CP militants had put out a shop paper at Ford all through the 1920s and into the 1930s. They had been the chief organizers of the 1932 Hunger March and the early auto unionization drives around Detroit.
Because of the CP’s reputation for fighting against racism and discrimination, the CP also had a special influence in the black community.
They were the ones who did much of the basic union recruitment in the plants. They helped to establish the framework of a union at the Rouge by linking up the union militants in all the departments with each other. It was their work which brought together more than 1000 shop floor union militants at the Rouge, long before Ford recognized the union. It was this structure that enrolled workers in the union. In the first months of 1941, membership jumped. In a single week period, 6000 workers joined up.
On March 13, 1941, three thousand workers in one division at the Rouge sat down on the job to protest firings of unionists. On March 18, 6,000 workers in the axle building sat down until 12 fired unionists were rehired there. On March 19, another building struck and the company once again gave in. On March 21, Ford agreed to return more than 1,000 fired unionists.
But when management refused to talk with a rolling mill delegation about the firing of unionists in that building, the rolling mill workers stopped work on April 2, quickly spreading their strike to other departments and buildings.
Some top UAW leaders tried to head off the strike by reporting that the government had agreed to hear the UAW’s petition for a special election. But the workers were not waiting. Within nine hours, the whole Rouge was shut down.
At least 10,000 of the Rouge’s 85,000 workers ringed the plant in massive picket lines. The workers formed huge barricades with parked cars, shutting down all the roads leading to the plant. When cars were removed, workers began to form moving picket lines of cars four and five abreast all around the Rouge. Workers all over the area joined in, despite attempts by the top UAW leadership to keep the struggle restricted to Ford workers.
Ford also had help from the AFL leadership and Homer Martin, former UAW president who was now on the Ford payroll. They tried to organize a back-to-work movement. They helped him try to discredit the strike, calling it unpatriotic and against the war effort. And they helped him red-bait the leadership of the strike for their communist politics.
Ford also tried to set up racial incidents to provoke trouble. When the Rouge complex was shut down, Ford did everything possible to keep some black workers inside. He called on help from these black ministers and other influential people he had courted, and offered the workers as much as $24 a day to stay inside, an astronomical sum at the time. About 1000 workers did so, most in the foundry.
On April 2, some of those black workers inside the plant were coerced into going outside to attack the pickets at Gate 4, most of whom were white. Big photos of this confrontation appeared in the Detroit press.
The workers found ways to respond to these various attacks. Pickets offered to share their food and coffee with the workers inside the plant. Some of those workers came out to cheers. Most important of all, the black workers who had been fired at Ford for union activity were among those who led the strike.
The youth group of the NAACP were active supporters of the strike. They went to the plant and appealed to the workers inside to come out.
Within eight days, Ford agreed to accept the union and to reinstate most of the fired workers–providing the strikers would agree to go through an election supervised by the new NLRB.
It was obvious the workers would vote overwhelmingly for their union. But hinging recognition on this government-controlled vote symbolized what was to follow: Top UAW officials increasingly pushed workers to depend on government procedures and on negotiations between the bosses and union officials, instead of on their own forces.
On April 12, a mass meeting of nearly 20,000 workers discussed the proposal to end their strike under these conditions. The most conscious workers understood they could have forced Ford to recognize them directly instead of waiting for the government’s stamp of approval, and voted to continue the strike. They were outvoted, but only by a small margin. When the election was held, of course workers voted for the union–overwhelmingly.
On June 20, 1941, Ford signed a contract with UAW officials. Ford offered to set up dues check-off for the union. It was the first arrangement of its kind, and it meant that union officials at Ford did not have to worry about convincing workers to pay their dues. Dues check-off assured the union of funds, and it symbolized the fact that the unions were already developing an apparatus independent of and set over the workers. Ford decided that if he had to accept unionization in his plants, he would deal with union officials and not the workers. In so doing, he helped those officials escape control of the workers.
Nonetheless, the Ford workers had shown what was possible when workers are united, determined and organized–something we need to relearn today in this period that more and more resembles the Great Depression.
Ford workers imposed their union. They also showed how the racism and racial divisions in the work force, which are always in the interests of the bosses, can be combated. And their struggle showed that a working class even as divided as that of the U.S. can unify its forces, giving it the possibility for victories it otherwise never could imagine.
Apr 18, 2011
John Thompson spent 14 years on Death Row for a murder he didn’t commit. When a blood test led to a new trial, more evidence proving Thompson’s innocence–including eyewitness accounts–came to light. Thompson was quickly acquitted of the murder charges.
Thompson’s lawyers showed that, during his first trial, the New Orleans District Attorney’s office had consciously hidden all that evidence which proved Thompson’s innocence. Thompson’s lawyers also showed that there was a pattern–in other cases, New Orleans prosecutors had hidden key evidence from defense lawyers.
And yet, according to the highest court of the country, the U.S. Supreme Court, this does not justify holding the New Orleans District Attorney’s office liable! In a five to four decision, these Supreme Liars overturned the 14-million-dollar award Thompson had won against the city of New Orleans.
Criminals in grey suits are getting away with stealing 14 years of a man’s life, because their big brothers in black robes protect them. No further comment necessary about the sorry state of the U.S. “criminal injustice” system.
Apr 18, 2011
Our contract ends in September. Workers say, “We gave up a lot. Will we get anything back?”
The 2009 contract specifically states that any unresolved issues will go to an arbitrator. It says, on page 2: “Wage and benefit improvements to be based upon Chrysler maintaining an all-in hourly labor cost comparable to its U.S. competitors.”
In other words, if we are going to get anything back, it won’t come from waiting.
The Chrysler work force is nearly 20% two-tier now. A rumor went around that many would now be moved up to first tier.
Under the 2007 contract, that would have been the rule. But when the Obama administration bailed out Chrysler, it cancelled that rule–until the year 2015 ... if not later.
This is another case where what is legal and what is right are two different things entirely.
Apr 18, 2011
After the UAW Bargaining Convention, UAW V-P Joe Ashton told reporters that the UAW would be willing to expand the two-tier wage system, whenever GM re-opens its Spring Hill and Janesville assembly plants. Ashton said the UAW would give up wages to create jobs.
But, as corporate-friendly analyst Sean McAlinden said later, “The carmakers are producing near the limits of what the current UAW workforce of 102,000 can do on maximum overtime.”
In other words, GM must create jobs, must re-open these plants, to gain production it needs. This gives the UAW a big bargaining chip.
But the UAW leadership gave up this chip to do GM a favor.
No–two-tier doesn’t create more jobs–only transforms more jobs to two-tier.
Apr 18, 2011
In a referendum on April 9th, Iceland voted for the second time to reject paying off debt left from the bankruptcy of Icesave Bank, part of Iceland’s Landsbanki.
A little more than a year ago, the population massively rejected the first plan, what the government called an “amicable” agreement among banks in Holland and Great Britain, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.
The second reimbursement plan would have returned 5.8 billion dollars lost by British and Dutch banks, as well as big and some small speculators, enticed by 5% to 6% interest rates.
What the government coalition of Social Democrats and Left Greens wanted the population to pay back was $17,000 per inhabitant over 30 years. Since the bank went under, unemployment in Iceland rose from 1% to 8.6% and many families lost their homes.
The Icelandic population clearly said NO to their members of parliament and the administration. They voted against the pay-back despite fake polls showing a majority supported the government’s plan, and despite the threats of “economic and political chaos,” invoked by the Icelandic prime minister. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF, had the nerve to say, “There are international obligations that countries have to respect.... Iceland, like other countries, can’t be immunized against what was done by its financial sector.”
After the vote, the banks owed the money claimed they would take Iceland to court.
The Icelandic population, without so much as a whiff of the phenomenal profits taken by the Icelandic, British and Dutch banks, has just given a well-placed kick to the behinds of officials and bankers.
Apr 18, 2011
Directors of Transocean Corporation recently awarded themselves “safety bonuses” for 2010.
Remember? Transocean was the slimy operator of the drilling rig that blew up in 2010, killing 11 workers, wiping out marine life and workers’ livelihoods, all along the Gulf coast.
The directors thought they deserved $250,000 each for their “excellent” safety record. But a more fitting award would involve suspension in barrels of crude–for a very long time!
Apr 18, 2011
On July 6, 1959, the core of a nuclear plant at Santa Susana Field Laboratory located in Simi Valley, California went through a partial meltdown. According to a panel of scientists who investigated this disaster, the nuclear plant released an amount of radiation 458 times that of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. This was the first commercial power plant in the world to experience a core meltdown. The Fermi I plant 20 miles south of Detroit went through a partial meltdown in 1966.
Although the Santa Susana disaster happened only 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, it is not widely known because of the government cover-up, just as with Fermi. Not until 20 years after the accident did the public learn of the extent and effects of this accident on their lives.
Rocketdyne operated this facility to test nuclear reactors from 1953 to 1980. Because these reactors were considered experimental, they did not have large concrete domes that could prevent them from contaminating the environment. Four of the ten nuclear reactors constructed during this period experienced accidents, releasing toxic and radioactive gases and liquids; poisoning the soil, air and ground water; and inflicting cancer to those around. Thousands of pounds of radioactive sodium coolant from the meltdown were lost to the area surrounding heavily populated metropolitan Los Angeles.
These nuclear plants severely damaged the environment and affected human life. They are no longer operational, but the radioactive and poisonous materials they released will remain in the environment for generations.
Apr 18, 2011
The Japanese government decided to set the evacuation zone at 12 miles around the Fukushima power plant after the incident there. That zone affects 70,000 people. The government advised the 130,000 people living up to 19 miles from the plant to stay at home. It said that staying in would be sufficient to avoid injury from the radiation, which it claimed was a low level amount.
However, the International Atomic Energy Agency said radiation rates from Fukushima would justify an evacuation zone of 25 miles from the plant. And the U.S. government recommended its citizens in Japan evacuate up to 50 miles from the nuclear power plant.
A month after the original disaster, the Japanese government finally announced it would include some villages and towns beyond the 12 miles as part of an evacuation zone, but added, “There is no need to evacuate immediately.”
Clearly the government is considering other factors than the health of the population. One big factor is that this region around Fukushima is highly industrialized. Electronic parts used in other industries around the world are made there.
These manufacturers suffered a considerable loss. The two-week stoppage at Hitachi factories, for example, led to partial shutdowns in Peugeot and GM factories elsewhere in the world. One estimate of the problems caused by a shortage of Japanese auto components suggests worldwide auto production could drop by 30%.
The Japanese authorities are choosing between the population’s health and the profits of the big industrial and financial companies. The Japanese population has every reason to be skeptical of the decisions their leaders make. It’s vital that the population itself exercise control over these decisions.
Apr 18, 2011
How much lower can the Japanese nuclear power company TEPCO go? After falsifying its reports on incidents at its Fukushima nuclear plant, after cutbacks on maintenance and safety that led to this nuclear catastrophe, after a profit of 1.8 billion dollars, it shamelessly demanded a rate increase for residents in April. And it dared to blame that on an increase in gas and oil prices!
TEPCO apparently plans to cover the losses and pay for the repair of their nuclear plant by making the population pay. After having killed and destroyed an entire region in the name of profit, the bosses can’t imagine paying for it!
To make matters worse, the Japanese government is supposedly thinking of taking a majority stake in the company, so that taxpayers will be responsible for the liability TEPCO has run up. Merrill Lynch estimates the cost at 133 billion dollars.
Apr 18, 2011
Severely damaged units of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, caused by the earthquake, have still not been contained after more than a month of intervention, releasing radiation and contaminants to the environment. The dangerous containment work on these radioactive reactors is done by workers, most of whom are untrained, itinerant, temporary laborers.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns these nuclear plants, did not start to employ these temps because of unusual conditions forced by the earthquake. Employing temps at nuclear reactors is a typical daily practice. Eighty-eight% of the workers running Japan’s 18 commercial nuclear power plants are temps, according to Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
In a usual day in any nuclear plant, these workers have the most dangerous jobs–exposed to levels of radiation about 16 times higher than those faced by regular company employees. Under intense heat, they clean off radiation from the reactors’ drywells and spent-fuel pools using mops and rags, and work in the cold to fill drums with radioactive waste. In the most dangerous places in the nuclear plant, where radiation levels are exceedingly high, the workers take turns. They do simple operations like opening and closing a valve for only a few seconds before a supervisor with a stopwatch asks the next worker to take over the job.
Still another side of this disaster provoked by an earthquake, but in reality caused by capital’s mad scramble for more profit.