Postal Workers, Community Allies Increase Pressure
as USPS Cuts Loom
Theresa Moran
As Congress dallies, some Postal workers and community activists are turning to civil disobedience to combat the sweeping cuts planned for the Postal Service. Union tops are sticking to a legislative strategy.
Ten postal worker and community activists in Portland, Oregon, were arrested May 24 when they occupied the city’s University Station Post Office, refusing to leave and blocking the closure of the office’s retail desk.
Nearly 100 supporters rallied outside as the activists inside held their ground, singing and holding banners proclaiming “Occupy the Post Office” and “No Closures! No Cuts!”
Police hauled them out after an hour and a half.
The occupation was organized by members of Communities and Postal Workers United, a cross-union network of postal worker activists. Other groups active in the “Occupy the Post Office” coalition include Jobs with Justice, the Rural Organizing Project, and Occupy groups.
The arrests, the first in the fight to save the post office, mark an escalation in tactics that CPWU organizers hope will spread to communities across the country.
According to Jamie Partridge, an arrestee from Occupy Portland and a retired postal worker, the action was meant to press Postmaster General Patrick Donohoe to halt his announced cuts and closures, which could slow mail and cost thousands of jobs as soon as this summer.
“It’s Congress and the President who can fix postal finances, but our immediate target is the Postmaster General,” Partridge said.
Activists with the Rural Organizing Project have occupied rural post offices in Oregon, and c+ommunity/labor coalitions against cuts have been active in New York, Baltimore, and rural Vermont.
The four postal unions (Mail Handlers, Postal Workers, Letter Carriers, and Rural Letter Carriers) have stuck to traditional rallies, jointly organizing a September 27 day of action with events in nearly 500 cities.
NO LEGISLATIVE FIX
The arrests come a month after the Senate passed a bill meant to provide relief to the financially struggling post office, a bill CPWU activists criticize for not going far enough.
Absent a fix from Congress, Donohoe’s plans for massive cuts to jobs and services will soon be underway. The Senate’s bill would do little to chase away the albatross dragging on USPS finances: an obligation passed by Congress in 2006 that requires the postal service to pre-fund the health benefits of retirees up to 75 years in the future. This requirement, not shared by any other federal agency, costs the postal service a hefty $5.5 billion per year.
The bill aims to ease the burden by allowing the postal service to make payments over a longer period of time but would also slash 100,000 postal jobs, largely through buyouts. If made law, the bill would make it harder for USPS to close small rural post offices and would preserve overnight delivery standards for three more years and Saturday delivery for two.
While some laud these provisions as victories—if enacted—there’s nothing to prevent the USPS from slashing standards after the protections expire. Indeed, postal managers have already said eliminating overnight delivery is one key strategy for cost savings in the near future.
Postal activists like Partridge, who’s on the Letter Carriers Branch 82 organizing committee, doubt the bill would do much to help. “It doesn’t actually take anything off the chopping block and it doesn’t fix the pre-funding issue,” he said.
Even leaders of the Postal Workers and the Letter Carriers criticized the bill as “flawed” and “deeply flawed” for allowing cuts and not doing enough to relieve the financial burden that Congress itself placed upon the USPS.
CAN’T CATCH A BREAK
Of course, none of these provisions will become law until postal relief legislation passes in the House, which seems unlikely anytime soon. That’s just as well, as the leading bill is one sponsored by California Republican Darrell Issa, who seeks to slash postal jobs and services into oblivion. Issa has refused to let a more favorable bill with broad support among House members come to a vote.
In the wake of Congress’s failure to pass timely relief legislation, Donohoe is moving ahead with major cuts. Plans to slash hours at post offices and to close processing plants were announced just in time for expiration of a May 15 moratorium on cuts and closures.
On May 17, the Postal Service announced it would go forward with plans to close half of its 461 mail processing plants over the next two years. The first round of 48 closures will happen this summer. On the chopping block are the 28,000 jobs in those plants, positions represented by the Postal Workers.
The week before, USPS announced it would reduce hours at 13,000 rural post offices across the country. There are 31,500 post offices nationwide. In the rural locations, full-time postmasters will be replaced with part-timers. The USPS is pushing early retirement for 21,000 postmasters. It’s not yet clear how many other jobs will be lost.
The newly announced cuts are a departure from the Postal Service’s original plan. Last July, Donohoe said he would close 3,700 rural, urban, and suburban offices that the USPS identified as low-revenue.
In a May 9 press release, Donohoe said the switch from closures to shorter hours was made in response to public opposition and that the agency would not shutter any offices “without having provided a viable solution.”
NOT A VICTORY
Postal activists caution, however, against labeling Donohoe’s new plan a win.
“This is no victory at all. It doesn’t make a difference if you’re closing 3,700 or cutting hours at 13,000—you’re still cutting service,” says Tom Dodge, a truck driver at the Baltimore mail processing center and an organizer with Communities and Postal Workers United.
At most offices, service cuts will come in the form of slashing operating hours. Many retail desks could see their open hours whittled down to as little as two a day. Such drastic cuts will effectively render post offices inaccessible to “anybody who has to work for a living,” Partridge said. Towns with offices on the cuts list also have the option of replacing the office with a “village post office,” a retail desk located within a private business such as a gas station or Walmart. Village post offices can sell stamps and ship flat-rate packages, but can’t handle weighing packages, shipping express or registered mail, or selling money orders.
The desks are staffed not by Unionized USPS workers but by non-union employees of the business where they’re located. Processing plant closures also mean serious problems for customers. Dodge knows firsthand how problematic these “consolidations” are. In November, the Frederick, Maryland, plant was closed and its mail sent to the Baltimore plant where Dodge works, 50 miles away.
The facility was so ill-prepared to accommodate the deluge of mail from Frederick that soon 22 semi trucks full of mail were lined up outside waiting to be unloaded. Mail has been delayed, sometimes comically so. Customers reported receiving circulars for Thanksgiving sales as late as February. Even after mail was diverted to Virginia and D.C. facilities, postal workers received reports of people receiving coupons weeks after they’d expired.
As Congress stalls in fixing the financial mess it created, activists are targeting Donohoe, who has ultimate authority to stop the closures and cuts. Some hope actions like the Portland occupation may pressure him into halting the cuts, while others are calling for his ouster.
Activists believe that Postmaster Donohoe’s cuts, by increasing customer dissatisfaction with the Postal Service, fit in to his master plan to shrink it to a fraction of its current self.
Labor Notes Theresa Moran
Friday, June 1, 2012
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
CA Gov Brown Threatens ILWU Strikers
Anti-Labor Gov Brown Threatens Investigation To Attack IBU-ILWU Ferry Boat Workers Strike Action
By JOHN S. MARSHALL, Associated Press – 5 hours ago
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i0K-dhahV5cGd5qHZlfL9RxU1WPQ?docId=9b7e7c83cf1a46b0b5197ab8496e4aff
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Thousands of people flocked to San Francisco's waterfront and onto Golden Gate Bridge on Sunday to celebrate the famous span's 75th birthday.
The daylong party attracted pleasure boats, tug boats and other vessels to the water as people on shore enjoyed a number of events stretching from Fort Point south of the bridge to Pier 39 along The Embarcadero. Many walked and biked across the bridge before capping the day by watching a fireworks display over the city's enduring symbol.
The bridge was shrouded in fog during part of the day, but skies were clear by nightfall for the 18 minute-long fireworks show.
"It's such an iconic structure, depending on the day or the hour, it just looks like it changes continuously," San Francisco resident Daniel Sutphin said as he walked through the Fort Point area with his wife and their three young children.
Since it opened in 1937, more than two-billion vehicles have crossed the 1.7-mile-long bridge named after the Golden Gate Strait, the entrance of water to San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean, and championed by engineer Joseph Strauss in the 1920s.
In a stark contrast to the thousands of celebrants, members of the group the Bridge Rail Foundation, an organization dedicated to stopping suicide jumps from the bridge, erected a display of 1,558 pairs of shoes, representing the number of people who died in leaps form the bridge since it opened in 1937. "It's a symbol of how deep and serious this problem has been," said Paul Muller, a spokesman for the group. "We're still losing 30 to 35 a people a year off the bridge," he said.
1 DAY STRIKE
Meanwhile on the water, Golden Gate ferries were running again after a one-day strike disrupted service across San Francisco Bay on Saturday.
Workers represented by the Inlandboatmen's Union walked off the job on a day strike, forcing the cancellation of ferries operated by Golden Gate between Larkspur, Sausalito and San Francisco.
The strike was called after nearly a year of negotiations over workloads and other matters, said Marina Secchitano, the Union's regional director.
California Gov. Jerry Brown issued a statement Saturday evening, saying that he was appointing a Board to investigate the strike, which, he claimed, created a disruption to public service.
Secchitano disputed the governor's claim, questioning the motivation to call for an investigation after a one-day strike. "(This is) an action to try to silence us," she said.
"They're counting on this process to back our membership off the issue," she said.
Service resumed Sunday when workers returned to work.
Monday, May 21, 2012
NNU Nurses' Robin Hood Tax
Nurses Lead Chicago Rally for Robin Hood Tax
by Mike Hall
Thousands of National Nurses United (NNU) activists and others called for a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street in a massive demonstration in Chicago. Said NNU co-President Karen Higgins, during the rally in Daley Plaza: We are watching and seeing Wall Street throwing our money away as we see people suffer and die. It will not continue. We pay sales tax. It is time for Wall Street to start paying back what they owe the rest of the country and they need to pay sales tax. The small financial tax on speculation by banks and financial institutions would create jobs and rebuild the economy that Wall Street broke. As NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro told reporters: We want a financial transaction tax where we can restore our communities and jumpstart a new strategic approach to the economy invested in the people in this country.
Worldwide, we're joined in movement with 40 countries that are already part of the Robin Hood movement and the Robin Hood tax and we're bringing it to America. The rally coincided with this weekend’s G-8 Summit of the eight top western economic powers, originally set for Chicago, and the NATO summit immediately following. But the G-8 moved to Camp David, Md., to avoid the large crowds of protesters.
Tom Morello spoke and played. After the rally, actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith performed, “Tell Us Where It Hurts, America’s Nurses Are Listening,” a theatrical piece derived from real-life stories of nurses and their patients gathered by NNU.“Tell me where it hurts? I'll tell you were it hurts," Smith said, her voice roaring from the stage. "It hurts when you see how privilege works...and when poor people die."
by Mike Hall
Thousands of National Nurses United (NNU) activists and others called for a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street in a massive demonstration in Chicago. Said NNU co-President Karen Higgins, during the rally in Daley Plaza: We are watching and seeing Wall Street throwing our money away as we see people suffer and die. It will not continue. We pay sales tax. It is time for Wall Street to start paying back what they owe the rest of the country and they need to pay sales tax. The small financial tax on speculation by banks and financial institutions would create jobs and rebuild the economy that Wall Street broke. As NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro told reporters: We want a financial transaction tax where we can restore our communities and jumpstart a new strategic approach to the economy invested in the people in this country.
Worldwide, we're joined in movement with 40 countries that are already part of the Robin Hood movement and the Robin Hood tax and we're bringing it to America. The rally coincided with this weekend’s G-8 Summit of the eight top western economic powers, originally set for Chicago, and the NATO summit immediately following. But the G-8 moved to Camp David, Md., to avoid the large crowds of protesters.
Tom Morello spoke and played. After the rally, actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith performed, “Tell Us Where It Hurts, America’s Nurses Are Listening,” a theatrical piece derived from real-life stories of nurses and their patients gathered by NNU.“Tell me where it hurts? I'll tell you were it hurts," Smith said, her voice roaring from the stage. "It hurts when you see how privilege works...and when poor people die."
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Noam Chomsky on Occupy & Labor
The historic reversal that began in the 1970s could become irreversible. That’s where we’re heading. And the Occupy movement is the first real, major, popular reaction that could avert this. But it’s going to be necessary to face the fact that it’s a long, hard struggle. You don’t win victories tomorrow. You have to form the structures that will be sustained, that will go on through hard times and can win major victories. And there are a lot of things that can be done.
Toward Worker Takeover
I mentioned before that, in the 1930s, one of the most effective actions was the sit-down strike. And the reason is simple: that’s just a step before the takeover of an industry.
Through the 1970s, as the decline was setting in, there were some important events that took place. In 1977, U.S. Steel decided to close one of its major facilities in Youngstown, Ohio. Instead of just walking away, the workforce and the community decided to get together and buy it from the company, hand it over to the work force, and turn it into a worker-run, worker-managed facility. They didn’t win. But with enough popular support, they could have won. It’s a topic that Gar Alperovitz and Staughton Lynd, the lawyer for the workers and community, have discussed in detail.
It was a partial victory because, even though they lost, it set off other efforts. And now, throughout Ohio, and in other places, there’s a scattering of hundreds, maybe thousands, of sometimes not-so-small worker/community-owned industries that could become worker-managed. And that’s the basis for a real revolution. That’s how it takes place.
In one of the suburbs of Boston, about a year ago, something similar happened. A multinational decided to close down a profitable, functioning facility carrying out some high-tech manufacturing. Evidently, it just wasn’t profitable enough for them. The workforce and the union offered to buy it, take it over, and run it themselves. The multinational decided to close it down instead, probably for reasons of class-consciousness. I don’t think they want things like this to happen. If there had been enough popular support, if there had been something like the Occupy movement that could have gotten involved, they might have succeeded. (Remember Republic Windows and Doors).
And there are other things going on like that. In fact, some of them are major. Not long ago, President Barack Obama took over the auto industry, which was basically owned by the public. And there were a number of things that could have been done. One was what was done: reconstitute it so that it could be handed back to the ownership, or very similar ownership, and continue on its traditional path.
The other possibility was to hand it over to the workforce -- which owned it anyway -- turn it into a worker-owned, worker-managed major industrial system that’s a big part of the economy, and have it produce things that people need. And there’s a lot that we need. We all know or should know that the United States is extremely backward globally in high-speed transportation, and it’s very serious. It not only affects people’s lives, but the economy. In that regard, here’s a personal story. I happened to be giving talks in France a couple of months ago and had to take a train from Avignon in southern France to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, the same distance as from Washington, DC, to Boston. It took two hours. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the train from Washington to Boston, but it’s operating at about the same speed it was 60 years ago when my wife and I first took it. It’s a scandal.
It could be done here as it’s been done in Europe. They had the capacity to do it, the skilled work force. It would have taken a little popular support, but it could have made a major change in the economy.
Just to make it more surreal, while this option was being avoided, the Obama administration was sending its transportation secretary to Spain to get contracts for developing high-speed rail for the United States, which could have been done right in the rust belt, which is being closed down. There are no economic reasons why this can’t happen. These are class reasons, and reflect the lack of popular political mobilization. Things like this continue.
Toward Worker Takeover
I mentioned before that, in the 1930s, one of the most effective actions was the sit-down strike. And the reason is simple: that’s just a step before the takeover of an industry.
Through the 1970s, as the decline was setting in, there were some important events that took place. In 1977, U.S. Steel decided to close one of its major facilities in Youngstown, Ohio. Instead of just walking away, the workforce and the community decided to get together and buy it from the company, hand it over to the work force, and turn it into a worker-run, worker-managed facility. They didn’t win. But with enough popular support, they could have won. It’s a topic that Gar Alperovitz and Staughton Lynd, the lawyer for the workers and community, have discussed in detail.
It was a partial victory because, even though they lost, it set off other efforts. And now, throughout Ohio, and in other places, there’s a scattering of hundreds, maybe thousands, of sometimes not-so-small worker/community-owned industries that could become worker-managed. And that’s the basis for a real revolution. That’s how it takes place.
In one of the suburbs of Boston, about a year ago, something similar happened. A multinational decided to close down a profitable, functioning facility carrying out some high-tech manufacturing. Evidently, it just wasn’t profitable enough for them. The workforce and the union offered to buy it, take it over, and run it themselves. The multinational decided to close it down instead, probably for reasons of class-consciousness. I don’t think they want things like this to happen. If there had been enough popular support, if there had been something like the Occupy movement that could have gotten involved, they might have succeeded. (Remember Republic Windows and Doors).
And there are other things going on like that. In fact, some of them are major. Not long ago, President Barack Obama took over the auto industry, which was basically owned by the public. And there were a number of things that could have been done. One was what was done: reconstitute it so that it could be handed back to the ownership, or very similar ownership, and continue on its traditional path.
The other possibility was to hand it over to the workforce -- which owned it anyway -- turn it into a worker-owned, worker-managed major industrial system that’s a big part of the economy, and have it produce things that people need. And there’s a lot that we need. We all know or should know that the United States is extremely backward globally in high-speed transportation, and it’s very serious. It not only affects people’s lives, but the economy. In that regard, here’s a personal story. I happened to be giving talks in France a couple of months ago and had to take a train from Avignon in southern France to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, the same distance as from Washington, DC, to Boston. It took two hours. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the train from Washington to Boston, but it’s operating at about the same speed it was 60 years ago when my wife and I first took it. It’s a scandal.
It could be done here as it’s been done in Europe. They had the capacity to do it, the skilled work force. It would have taken a little popular support, but it could have made a major change in the economy.
Just to make it more surreal, while this option was being avoided, the Obama administration was sending its transportation secretary to Spain to get contracts for developing high-speed rail for the United States, which could have been done right in the rust belt, which is being closed down. There are no economic reasons why this can’t happen. These are class reasons, and reflect the lack of popular political mobilization. Things like this continue.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
CAL NURSES STRIKE
Re: participation in M1GS (LA's May !st General Strike): all our resources are going towards a 4,500 Registered Nurse Strike against Sutter Health in Northern California. This has been targeted to exert the maximum leverage at a critical point in the struggle against the 1%. Sutter has proposed outrageous cuts - to our members' standards, but more importantly to "unprofitable" aspects of patient care, mostly services to the most vulnerable members of the 99%. Would we be striking Sutter at some point anyway if not for the Occupation's call for a General Strike? Absolutely - this is the only language they understand and the struggle against market based healthcare goes on 24/7/365. But the date is not an accident, and we stand in solidarity with the Occupation and support all the actions nationwide taking place for International Workers' Day.
-James Moy
http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/blog/entry/northern-california-sutter-rns-to-strike-may-1-to-protest-attack-on-patient/
Northern California Sutter RNs to Strike May 1
To Protest Attack on Patient Care, RN Standards
Where to Join the Picket Line, and at Strike Rallies Tuesday
Northern California RNs will strike eight Sutter corporation hospitals Tuesday, May 1 to once again protest the wealthy corporation’s outrageous demands for more than 100 reductions in patient care protections and RN standards.
The nurses will also protest ongoing cuts in patient services – the latest being the expected announcement by Sutter next week that it intends to close the San Leandro hospital, abandoning the thousands of patients who depend on that hospital every year for acute care.
Sutter is making these demands for contract concessions and sweeping cuts in care despite making over $4 billion in profits since 2007, and handing its chief executive Pat Fry at 215 percent pay hike to over $4 million a year, in addition to salaries of over $1 million a year to some 20 other top executives.
Join the Sutter RNs on the picket line, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the following facilities:
Alta Bates Main Campus, 2450 Ashby Avenue, Berkeley
Alta Bates Herrick Campus, 2001 Dwight Way, Berkeley (psychiatric care facility)
Alta Bates Summit Campus, 350 Hawthorne Avenue, Oakland
Eden Medical Center, 20103 Lake Chabot Rd, Castro Valley
San Leandro Hospital, 13855 E. 14th St., San Leandro
Mills-Peninsula Medical Center, 1501 Trousdale Drive, Burlingame
Mills Health Center, 100 S. San Mateo Drive, San Mateo
Sutter Lakeside Hospital, 5176 Hill Road East, Lakeport
Novato Community Hospital, 180 Rowland Way, Novato
Sutter Solano Medical Center, 300 Hospital Drive, Vallejo
Sutter Delta Medical Center, 3901 Lone Tree Way, Antioch
Rallies are planned at the following locations:
Alta Bates, Ashby hospital, Berkeley – 11 a.m.
Sutter Solano, Vallejo – 11 a.m.
Sutter Delta, Antioch – 12 noon
Eden Medical – 12 noon
Alta Bates, Summit hospital – 1 p.m.
Peninsula – 2 p.m.
Sutter Lakeside- 3 p.m.
San Leandro – 3 p.m., followed by Town Hall meeting, San Leandro Senior Community Center, 13909 E. 14th Street
Among the many concession demands at various Sutter hospitals:
Eliminating paid sick leave, effectively forcing nurses to work when ill, exposing already frail and vulnerable patients to further infection.
Forcing RNs to work in hospital areas for which they do not have appropriate clinical expertise, again a safety risk for patients.
Huge increases in nurses’ out-of-pocket costs for health coverage for themselves and family members.
Limits on the ability of charge nurses, who make clinical assignments for nurses, to address staffing shortages, subjecting patients to the danger of unsafe staffing.
Forcing RNs to work overtime, exposing patients to care from fatigued nurses who are more prone to making medical errors.
Eliminating retiree health plans.
Eliminating all health coverage for nurses who work less than 30 hours per week.
Reduced pregnancy and family medical leave, undermining RN families.
Concurrently, Sutter continues to make substantial cuts in patient services throughout the region, especially in areas it considers inadequately profitable, such as mental health, cancer screening, and services for women, children, and seniors.
“Sutter’s tone at the bargaining table has been dismissive and disrespectful of nurses' concerns,” said Mills-Peninsula RN Genel Morgan. “They have misjudged our resolve to stand up and safeguard our nursing standards, and to ensure our patients don’t suffer from Sutter wanting to cut these standards. Sutter has used half truths and lies to justify their objectives, but we see right through them, much as the community sees through them whenever Sutter cuts services. “
“Sutter has passed the stage of ‘too big to fail’ going to ‘too big to care’,” said CNA/NNU co-president Zenei Cortez, RN. “They have shown they are far more interested in amassing wealth than caring about community health or the nurses who provide care for the patients who are the base of Sutter’s huge profits. Sutter RNs will never accept a reduced voice to speak out for patients, or an erosion in their own standards.”
Sutter’s additional abandonment of communities and patients (partial list):
End breast cancer screening for women with disabilities and most bone marrow transplant services for cancer patients at Alta Bates Summit in Oakland and Berkeley.
Stop providing psychiatric services under contract with Sacramento County for more than 225 Sacramento children.
Close specialized pediatric care, acute rehabilitation, dialysis, and skilled nursing care services at Mills and Peninsula hospitals in Burlingame and San Mateo.
Close home health services and limit acute-care hospital stays in Lakeport.
Close acute rehabilitation services, skilled nursing care, and psychiatric services, and substantially downgrade nursery care for sick children at Eden Hospital in Castro Valley.
Sharply cut psychiatric care at Herrick Hospital in Berkeley.
Close a birthing center at Sutter Auburn Faith, forcing new mothers and families to travel up to 100 miles for obstetrics care, while giving a $1 million gift to the Sacramento Kings.
Close pediatric, psychiatric, lactation, and transitional care services in Santa Rosa.
-James Moy
http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/blog/entry/northern-california-sutter-rns-to-strike-may-1-to-protest-attack-on-patient/
Northern California Sutter RNs to Strike May 1
To Protest Attack on Patient Care, RN Standards
Where to Join the Picket Line, and at Strike Rallies Tuesday
Northern California RNs will strike eight Sutter corporation hospitals Tuesday, May 1 to once again protest the wealthy corporation’s outrageous demands for more than 100 reductions in patient care protections and RN standards.
The nurses will also protest ongoing cuts in patient services – the latest being the expected announcement by Sutter next week that it intends to close the San Leandro hospital, abandoning the thousands of patients who depend on that hospital every year for acute care.
Sutter is making these demands for contract concessions and sweeping cuts in care despite making over $4 billion in profits since 2007, and handing its chief executive Pat Fry at 215 percent pay hike to over $4 million a year, in addition to salaries of over $1 million a year to some 20 other top executives.
Join the Sutter RNs on the picket line, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the following facilities:
Alta Bates Main Campus, 2450 Ashby Avenue, Berkeley
Alta Bates Herrick Campus, 2001 Dwight Way, Berkeley (psychiatric care facility)
Alta Bates Summit Campus, 350 Hawthorne Avenue, Oakland
Eden Medical Center, 20103 Lake Chabot Rd, Castro Valley
San Leandro Hospital, 13855 E. 14th St., San Leandro
Mills-Peninsula Medical Center, 1501 Trousdale Drive, Burlingame
Mills Health Center, 100 S. San Mateo Drive, San Mateo
Sutter Lakeside Hospital, 5176 Hill Road East, Lakeport
Novato Community Hospital, 180 Rowland Way, Novato
Sutter Solano Medical Center, 300 Hospital Drive, Vallejo
Sutter Delta Medical Center, 3901 Lone Tree Way, Antioch
Rallies are planned at the following locations:
Alta Bates, Ashby hospital, Berkeley – 11 a.m.
Sutter Solano, Vallejo – 11 a.m.
Sutter Delta, Antioch – 12 noon
Eden Medical – 12 noon
Alta Bates, Summit hospital – 1 p.m.
Peninsula – 2 p.m.
Sutter Lakeside- 3 p.m.
San Leandro – 3 p.m., followed by Town Hall meeting, San Leandro Senior Community Center, 13909 E. 14th Street
Among the many concession demands at various Sutter hospitals:
Eliminating paid sick leave, effectively forcing nurses to work when ill, exposing already frail and vulnerable patients to further infection.
Forcing RNs to work in hospital areas for which they do not have appropriate clinical expertise, again a safety risk for patients.
Huge increases in nurses’ out-of-pocket costs for health coverage for themselves and family members.
Limits on the ability of charge nurses, who make clinical assignments for nurses, to address staffing shortages, subjecting patients to the danger of unsafe staffing.
Forcing RNs to work overtime, exposing patients to care from fatigued nurses who are more prone to making medical errors.
Eliminating retiree health plans.
Eliminating all health coverage for nurses who work less than 30 hours per week.
Reduced pregnancy and family medical leave, undermining RN families.
Concurrently, Sutter continues to make substantial cuts in patient services throughout the region, especially in areas it considers inadequately profitable, such as mental health, cancer screening, and services for women, children, and seniors.
“Sutter’s tone at the bargaining table has been dismissive and disrespectful of nurses' concerns,” said Mills-Peninsula RN Genel Morgan. “They have misjudged our resolve to stand up and safeguard our nursing standards, and to ensure our patients don’t suffer from Sutter wanting to cut these standards. Sutter has used half truths and lies to justify their objectives, but we see right through them, much as the community sees through them whenever Sutter cuts services. “
“Sutter has passed the stage of ‘too big to fail’ going to ‘too big to care’,” said CNA/NNU co-president Zenei Cortez, RN. “They have shown they are far more interested in amassing wealth than caring about community health or the nurses who provide care for the patients who are the base of Sutter’s huge profits. Sutter RNs will never accept a reduced voice to speak out for patients, or an erosion in their own standards.”
Sutter’s additional abandonment of communities and patients (partial list):
End breast cancer screening for women with disabilities and most bone marrow transplant services for cancer patients at Alta Bates Summit in Oakland and Berkeley.
Stop providing psychiatric services under contract with Sacramento County for more than 225 Sacramento children.
Close specialized pediatric care, acute rehabilitation, dialysis, and skilled nursing care services at Mills and Peninsula hospitals in Burlingame and San Mateo.
Close home health services and limit acute-care hospital stays in Lakeport.
Close acute rehabilitation services, skilled nursing care, and psychiatric services, and substantially downgrade nursery care for sick children at Eden Hospital in Castro Valley.
Sharply cut psychiatric care at Herrick Hospital in Berkeley.
Close a birthing center at Sutter Auburn Faith, forcing new mothers and families to travel up to 100 miles for obstetrics care, while giving a $1 million gift to the Sacramento Kings.
Close pediatric, psychiatric, lactation, and transitional care services in Santa Rosa.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Labor Wins vs. Republicans
Republican Attack on Fair Union Election Rule Fails in Senate
Congressional Republicans today failed in their latest attempt to roll back workers’ rights. The U.S. Senate defeated (45-54) a measure (S.J. Res. 36) to kill a new National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rule that makes modest changes in the procedures for workers who want to vote on whether to form a union. It also would have banned the NLRB from ever issuing any similar fair election rule.
Before the vote, the White House announced that President Obama opposed the Republican assault on workers and would veto the legislation if it got to his desk.
Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), said of the Republican proposal:
Contrary to the vitriolic attacks by Republican lawmakers, the new rule does not encourage or discourage unionization and it applies to elections to form a union and elections to decertify a union.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the Republican attack on the NLRB ”is just the latest in this relentless series of nationally coordinated assaults on workers and collective bargaining rights.”
In an op-ed today in The Hill, John Logan, professor and director of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University, wrote:
In November, House Republicans approved a bill that gives employers new tools to combat and delay elections by workers who try to form unions. It was a direct response to the new NLRB election rule. The Senate didn’t take up the measure.
Congressional Republicans have made nearly 50 separate assaults on the NLRB since last year by holding hearings, issuing subpoenas and proposing bills to gut the agency’s funding and eliminate its ability to hold employers accountable for violating Workers’ rights, according to American Rights at Work (ARAW). Click here for a detailed look.
written by Mike Hall
.
The administration is committed to supporting the right of workers to join and participate in a union and bargain for fair wages, benefits and a safe workplace. These rights are fundamental to better conditions for American workers and to an open, just, economically fair and prosperous society. S.J. Res. 36 attacks these bedrock American values.
It is disappointing that in the face of growing income inequality and stagnant wages for all but the highest earners, lawmakers would fail to stand by workers who seek only to exercise their legal rights in an atmosphere free of intimidation and retaliation.
The rule is due to take effect April 30 and it will help alleviate the delays, inefficiencies, abuse of process and unnecessary litigation that plague the current system. Under current rules, workers can be forced to wait months or even years before they are allowed to vote on joining a union and then begin bargaining for a fair contract. The new NLRB rule eliminates many of those roadblocks by reducing current delays and eliminating frivolous litigation.Contrary to the vitriolic attacks by Republican lawmakers, the new rule does not encourage or discourage unionization and it applies to elections to form a union and elections to decertify a union.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the Republican attack on the NLRB ”is just the latest in this relentless series of nationally coordinated assaults on workers and collective bargaining rights.”
In an op-ed today in The Hill, John Logan, professor and director of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University, wrote:
Never in its history has the NLRB experienced anything quite like the political attacks of the past 15 months. But the root cause of the controversy is not, as [Republicans] would have us believe, that the board has moved to the left. Rather, the GOP has moved far to the right and no longer believes that workers should be free to select representatives of their own choosing and engage in collective bargaining to improve their terms and conditions of work.
Congressional Republicans have made nearly 50 separate assaults on the NLRB since last year by holding hearings, issuing subpoenas and proposing bills to gut the agency’s funding and eliminate its ability to hold employers accountable for violating Workers’ rights, according to American Rights at Work (ARAW). Click here for a detailed look.
written by Mike Hall
.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Canada Strikes Show Need for LABOR MOVEMENT
Attacks on Teachers, Airline Workers, and Public Pensions in Canada Highlight Need for a Fighting Labor Movement
by Roger Annis
A trend is taking hold across Canada of working class resistance to the capitalist crisis and attacks by governments and corporations on workers' rights and the social wage. Library workers in the city of Toronto and transit and university workers in Halifax recently went on strike, as did daycare workers in Quebec. Workers at Air Canada have staged a series of protests and strikes in the past year. Teachers and students in British Columbia recently struck for better education, while in Quebec students are waging a spectacular mass campaign against rises in post-secondary tuition fees. Provincial government workers are restive.
Some 300,000 government service workers in British Columbia are bargaining a new collective agreement and saying no to the same wage and services freeze the government is seeking to impose on teachers. The government of Ontario recently delivered a budget that aims to cut billions of dollars in services and thousands of jobs. Equally noticeable is the lag in organizing the broad solidarity necessary for these struggles to win. This article examines the two sides of a dynamic and unfolding reality.
Teachers Defend Education
The 41,000 members of the BC Teachers' Federation (BCTF) are in the midst of a bitter collective bargaining confrontation with the provincial government. They are fighting a two-year salary freeze that the Liberal government is seeking to impose. They also want to win back the right to bargain class sizes and other aspects of their work that directly affect the quality of the education they provide. Teachers began job action at the beginning of the school year, last September, declining to participate in voluntary activities and cooperate with administrators, including refusing to fill out report cards. Job action escalated into a three-day strike beginning March 5 when the government announced it would impose a draconian law to strip away the right to strike and send disputed issues to a skewed "mediation" process. Bill 22 says mediation must correspond to the government's guideline of a two-year, "net zero" increase to education spending. The bill was passed into law on March 17. It imposes stiff penalties on the union and individual teachers for strike or other job action. Further strike action appears unlikely. The union is mulling participation in the government's mediation, something it said earlier it would not do. It recently announced it would mount a major effort over the coming year to unseat the government. The next provincial election will take place in May 2013. Support for the teachers' struggle has been very strong in the province, including a province-wide strike by secondary school students on March 2. But it has been lacking from other unions. Notwithstanding the fact that the government and its popularity is "in free fall," according to the BCTF and confirmed by recent polls, the broader labor movement in the province has not mobilized in support of teachers. The BCTF expects it will get a more sympathetic ear should the opposition New Democratic Party get elected in 2013. The trade union-based party is leading the Liberals in the polls by a huge margin. But its leaders have stated they will not repeal Bill 22 and they have not said if and how they would satisfy teacher/parent/student grievances.
Airline Workers Get Hammered
Airline workers in Canada suffered a blow on March 18 and 19 when the aircraft maintenance company AVEOS staged a bankruptcy that has thrown some 2,600 highly skilled workers out of work in Montreal, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. The company said it is out of money and may not even meet its salary and pension obligations to workers.The flagrant abuse of this bankruptcy spectacle has angered and offended the people of Quebec in particular. About 1,800 of the affected workers are in Montreal. For several days following the bankruptcy announcement, AVEOS workers protested and blocked traffic leading into the corporate offices of Air Canada in the city.On March 21, the National Assembly of Quebec (provincial government) passed a resolution unanimously demanding the federal government undertake "all possible legal recourse" to keep the AVEOS facility open. Talks and legal actions are underway to revive some or all of the shuttered AVEOS/Air Canada operation, including using money from the state-assisted Solidarity (capital investment) Fund of the Quebec Federation of Labour.In British Columbia, the legislative assembly unanimously adopted a resolution in early April that asks the federal government to accord to the AVEOS facility in Vancouver whatever job protection might be won in other cities.
Declining Conditions of Airline Workers
AVEOS was created in 2007 by Air Canada, the largest airline in the country. It was a spinoff of a portion of its aircraft maintenance division. The airline shifted its heavy maintenance work to the shadow company while keeping its line maintenance in house. ("Heavy maintenance" is the major overhaul that aircraft routinely require in order to remain safe to fly. "Line maintenance" is the repair and maintenance required by aircraft while in service, typically retained by airlines for reasons of quality control and speed of service.)Around the time that AVEOS was created, Air Canada purchased a heavy maintenance aircraft repair facility in El Salvador, where wages are about 15 percent of what the company pays in Canada. Although that facility became part of AVEOS, its ownership structure was jerry-rigged to keep it unaffected by a future 'bankruptcy' of its parent. The airline thus became well placed to shift its heavy maintenance elsewhere for a fraction of the cost.The moves to offload maintenance of aircraft were only the latest in a series of steps by investors to loot Air Canada of its accumulated value following the privatization of the airline in 1988. Among the many moves that have earned hundreds of millions of dollars for the directors and shareholders of Air Canada since its privatization are: Lowering of salaries and benefits of operations workers (cleaning, baggage handling, handing of planes at terminals, etc.) through a two-tier system of remuneration of new hires. Expansion of part-time and on-call work wherever possible. Purchase of Air Canada's largest competitor, Canadian Airlines, in 2001 and then declaration of insolvency in 2003 to liquidate debt from that and other acquisitions. Sale in the early 2000s of Air Canada's engine repair shops to a foreign buyer specializing in that work.Sale of the flyer rewards division of the airline. Creation of a short-haul (under three hours of flying), lower-wage division of the airline, called "Jazz." The gradual breakdown of common bargaining among the three or four major unions at the airline.Other attacks on Air Canada workers are taking place simultaneous to the AVEOS shutdown, notably against the right to bargain collective agreements. Beginning last year, the federal government now routinely outlaws strikes at the airline. Bargaining in 2011 prompted job actions by two of the three major unions at Air Canada -- the Canadian Autoworkers Union (ticket agents) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (flight attendants) -- but they also prompted anti-strike laws. No significant protest was mounted either by the affected unions or by the broader labor movement. Negotiated agreements with the CAW and CUPE included a new, lower-tier pension for new employees. This year, the government threatened the same anti-strike measure against the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace W orkers (IAM) and its pilots association. Talks with the IAM are currently in mediation where the CAW/CUPE pattern will weigh heavily. Looming over the entire situation at the airline is the threat of a repeat performance of the 2003 bankruptcy. This could set the stage, as in 2003, to pressure workers for more wage and benefit concessions. Air Canada has unfunded pension obligations of more than $2 billion for its past and present employees.
Attack on Canada's Public Pension Plan
On March 29, the Conservative government that was re-elected with a parliamentary majority last year announced an unprecedented attack on Canada's public pension plan. The measure was contained in a budget projection that also targets cuts of key public services and several tens of thousands of jobs. If the pension measure passes through Parliament, the age of eligibility of the second tier of the pension plan, Old Age Security, will pass from age 65 to 67. OAS pays some $550 per month to pension earners of annual incomes below $69,000. An earlier attack in 2009 increased the penalties for those drawing the first tier of the national pension, the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), before the age of 65. Those drawing CPP at the earliest eligible age, 60, for example, will be penalized for life by 42 per cent, compared to the previous 30 per cent. This was a bipartisan attack supported by the then-official opposition party, the Liberals.
Lessons
Some important lessons flow from these current battles. The main one is the need for mass mobilization of workers if employer attacks are to be turned back. The days of relying on good will or favorable court decisions are long past.The public pension situation is instructive. In 2010, pressure from members was building on Canada's unions and their political party, the NDP, to launch a mass campaign to increase benefits of the Canada Pension Plan. This was fueled, in part, by the growing practice of companies (cf. Air Canada) to underfund their employee pension plans.The federal government deflected the mounting pressure by promising to legislate increases to the CPP. But it set a condition on union and NDP leaders: "Don't pressure us with mass actions on Parliament Hill." Union leaders acquiesced, the informal deal was on.
by Roger Annis
A trend is taking hold across Canada of working class resistance to the capitalist crisis and attacks by governments and corporations on workers' rights and the social wage. Library workers in the city of Toronto and transit and university workers in Halifax recently went on strike, as did daycare workers in Quebec. Workers at Air Canada have staged a series of protests and strikes in the past year. Teachers and students in British Columbia recently struck for better education, while in Quebec students are waging a spectacular mass campaign against rises in post-secondary tuition fees. Provincial government workers are restive.
Some 300,000 government service workers in British Columbia are bargaining a new collective agreement and saying no to the same wage and services freeze the government is seeking to impose on teachers. The government of Ontario recently delivered a budget that aims to cut billions of dollars in services and thousands of jobs. Equally noticeable is the lag in organizing the broad solidarity necessary for these struggles to win. This article examines the two sides of a dynamic and unfolding reality.
Teachers Defend Education
The 41,000 members of the BC Teachers' Federation (BCTF) are in the midst of a bitter collective bargaining confrontation with the provincial government. They are fighting a two-year salary freeze that the Liberal government is seeking to impose. They also want to win back the right to bargain class sizes and other aspects of their work that directly affect the quality of the education they provide. Teachers began job action at the beginning of the school year, last September, declining to participate in voluntary activities and cooperate with administrators, including refusing to fill out report cards. Job action escalated into a three-day strike beginning March 5 when the government announced it would impose a draconian law to strip away the right to strike and send disputed issues to a skewed "mediation" process. Bill 22 says mediation must correspond to the government's guideline of a two-year, "net zero" increase to education spending. The bill was passed into law on March 17. It imposes stiff penalties on the union and individual teachers for strike or other job action. Further strike action appears unlikely. The union is mulling participation in the government's mediation, something it said earlier it would not do. It recently announced it would mount a major effort over the coming year to unseat the government. The next provincial election will take place in May 2013. Support for the teachers' struggle has been very strong in the province, including a province-wide strike by secondary school students on March 2. But it has been lacking from other unions. Notwithstanding the fact that the government and its popularity is "in free fall," according to the BCTF and confirmed by recent polls, the broader labor movement in the province has not mobilized in support of teachers. The BCTF expects it will get a more sympathetic ear should the opposition New Democratic Party get elected in 2013. The trade union-based party is leading the Liberals in the polls by a huge margin. But its leaders have stated they will not repeal Bill 22 and they have not said if and how they would satisfy teacher/parent/student grievances.
Airline Workers Get Hammered
Airline workers in Canada suffered a blow on March 18 and 19 when the aircraft maintenance company AVEOS staged a bankruptcy that has thrown some 2,600 highly skilled workers out of work in Montreal, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. The company said it is out of money and may not even meet its salary and pension obligations to workers.The flagrant abuse of this bankruptcy spectacle has angered and offended the people of Quebec in particular. About 1,800 of the affected workers are in Montreal. For several days following the bankruptcy announcement, AVEOS workers protested and blocked traffic leading into the corporate offices of Air Canada in the city.On March 21, the National Assembly of Quebec (provincial government) passed a resolution unanimously demanding the federal government undertake "all possible legal recourse" to keep the AVEOS facility open. Talks and legal actions are underway to revive some or all of the shuttered AVEOS/Air Canada operation, including using money from the state-assisted Solidarity (capital investment) Fund of the Quebec Federation of Labour.In British Columbia, the legislative assembly unanimously adopted a resolution in early April that asks the federal government to accord to the AVEOS facility in Vancouver whatever job protection might be won in other cities.
Declining Conditions of Airline Workers
AVEOS was created in 2007 by Air Canada, the largest airline in the country. It was a spinoff of a portion of its aircraft maintenance division. The airline shifted its heavy maintenance work to the shadow company while keeping its line maintenance in house. ("Heavy maintenance" is the major overhaul that aircraft routinely require in order to remain safe to fly. "Line maintenance" is the repair and maintenance required by aircraft while in service, typically retained by airlines for reasons of quality control and speed of service.)Around the time that AVEOS was created, Air Canada purchased a heavy maintenance aircraft repair facility in El Salvador, where wages are about 15 percent of what the company pays in Canada. Although that facility became part of AVEOS, its ownership structure was jerry-rigged to keep it unaffected by a future 'bankruptcy' of its parent. The airline thus became well placed to shift its heavy maintenance elsewhere for a fraction of the cost.The moves to offload maintenance of aircraft were only the latest in a series of steps by investors to loot Air Canada of its accumulated value following the privatization of the airline in 1988. Among the many moves that have earned hundreds of millions of dollars for the directors and shareholders of Air Canada since its privatization are: Lowering of salaries and benefits of operations workers (cleaning, baggage handling, handing of planes at terminals, etc.) through a two-tier system of remuneration of new hires. Expansion of part-time and on-call work wherever possible. Purchase of Air Canada's largest competitor, Canadian Airlines, in 2001 and then declaration of insolvency in 2003 to liquidate debt from that and other acquisitions. Sale in the early 2000s of Air Canada's engine repair shops to a foreign buyer specializing in that work.Sale of the flyer rewards division of the airline. Creation of a short-haul (under three hours of flying), lower-wage division of the airline, called "Jazz." The gradual breakdown of common bargaining among the three or four major unions at the airline.Other attacks on Air Canada workers are taking place simultaneous to the AVEOS shutdown, notably against the right to bargain collective agreements. Beginning last year, the federal government now routinely outlaws strikes at the airline. Bargaining in 2011 prompted job actions by two of the three major unions at Air Canada -- the Canadian Autoworkers Union (ticket agents) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (flight attendants) -- but they also prompted anti-strike laws. No significant protest was mounted either by the affected unions or by the broader labor movement. Negotiated agreements with the CAW and CUPE included a new, lower-tier pension for new employees. This year, the government threatened the same anti-strike measure against the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace W orkers (IAM) and its pilots association. Talks with the IAM are currently in mediation where the CAW/CUPE pattern will weigh heavily. Looming over the entire situation at the airline is the threat of a repeat performance of the 2003 bankruptcy. This could set the stage, as in 2003, to pressure workers for more wage and benefit concessions. Air Canada has unfunded pension obligations of more than $2 billion for its past and present employees.
Attack on Canada's Public Pension Plan
On March 29, the Conservative government that was re-elected with a parliamentary majority last year announced an unprecedented attack on Canada's public pension plan. The measure was contained in a budget projection that also targets cuts of key public services and several tens of thousands of jobs. If the pension measure passes through Parliament, the age of eligibility of the second tier of the pension plan, Old Age Security, will pass from age 65 to 67. OAS pays some $550 per month to pension earners of annual incomes below $69,000. An earlier attack in 2009 increased the penalties for those drawing the first tier of the national pension, the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), before the age of 65. Those drawing CPP at the earliest eligible age, 60, for example, will be penalized for life by 42 per cent, compared to the previous 30 per cent. This was a bipartisan attack supported by the then-official opposition party, the Liberals.
Lessons
Some important lessons flow from these current battles. The main one is the need for mass mobilization of workers if employer attacks are to be turned back. The days of relying on good will or favorable court decisions are long past.The public pension situation is instructive. In 2010, pressure from members was building on Canada's unions and their political party, the NDP, to launch a mass campaign to increase benefits of the Canada Pension Plan. This was fueled, in part, by the growing practice of companies (cf. Air Canada) to underfund their employee pension plans.The federal government deflected the mounting pressure by promising to legislate increases to the CPP. But it set a condition on union and NDP leaders: "Don't pressure us with mass actions on Parliament Hill." Union leaders acquiesced, the informal deal was on.
Months later, the government reneged, announcing instead a new plan to give tax breaks to employee/employer-funded pension plans that invest in financial markets. In 1985, a mass movement dubbed "grey power" arose when the federal government of the time sought to lessen inflation protection for the public pension plan. No equivalent protest is happening in response to these latest cuts, but that could quickly change. Teachers in BC have learned firsthand the dubious benefit of court appeals as substitutes for strikes or other mass action.
An appeal by the BCTF of two anti-union and anti-education laws adopted in 2002 took more than eight years to wind its way through the courts. The BC Supreme Court finally ruled that Bills 27 and 28 violated some of the basic rights of teachers. In the new Bill 22, the government formally repealed Bills 27 and 28 and then placed nearly identical language in the new law!Hospital workers in BC have been similarly disappointed by the courts. In 2004, the provincial government outlawed a province-wide strike of hospital workers and then proceeded to privatize some 8,500 jobs of hospital support staff and cut the wages of all other staff. Three and a half years later, the BC Supreme Court ruled the law illegal. The affected union declared a big victory, but the court's remedy was a miserly financial compensation of a few thousand dollars to those workers who lost their jobs.
When AVEOS was created in 2007, every worker at Air Canada feared this was a move to eventually shift heavy maintenance work to lower-wage jurisdictions in other countries. Workers staged protests when the news broke.Leaders of the IAM and of provincial and federal federations of labor made blustery speeches saying the decision would not be allowed to pass. But the speeches ended in one feeble action -- an appeal to a federal court asking it to rule that the creation of AVEOS was in violation of the 1988 Air Canada Public Participation Act. That act was created to soften union opposition to the privatization of Air Canada, then a state enterprise. It directed Air Canada to maintain its "maintenance work" at three facilities -- Montreal, Toronto. and Winnipeg.1
In 2010, a federal judge accepted Air Canada's word that it planned to keep maintenance work in the targeted cities. The judge conveniently ignored a precise interpretation of what "maintenance work" constituted. Incredibly, if the IAM thought that AVEOS was being set up for an eventual downfall, it never said so publicly or acted accordingly. It turns out that Air Canada helped to precipitate the "bankruptcy" of AVEOS by quietly directing its work away from it. The long history of the dismantling of Air Canada -- what can only be described as the looting of a former public enterprise -- goes largely unmentioned by all parties involved.
What Road Ahead for Workers?
Private employers and especially federal and provincial governments are stepping up their attacks on jobs and public services. A more militant and coordinated response is needed by the union movement. All indications show the desire of workers for just such a course. Last year, the Occupy movement was widely hailed. Strike activity is on the upswing. Air Canada workers show the restive mood -- rank and file-initiated strikes and protests have become near commonplace and workers are typically rejecting concession agreements negotiated by their leaders.Working-class resistance has been strongest in Quebec. The social democratic NDP won a landslide victory in the province during the 2011 federal election. A mass student movement is refusing to bow to government threats and has mobilized tens of thousands in the streets.The challenge before the unions is to act as a social movement on behalf of the entire working class and break from the mould of job trusts focused on looking after the narrow interests of their dues-paying members. In the wake of the federal budget that attacked the OAS, newly elected leader of the NDP Tom Mulcair said the party would do "everything possible within the Parliamentary arena" to oppose the budget. But much more is needed. While it is useful to have a voice in Parliament on behalf of workers' interest, current battles will be won in the streets and on the picket lines. That is where attention and solidarity must be directed. Furthermore, all this will help open the door to the political challenge to capitalist rule that is needed and increasingly on the agenda. 1 The Air Canada maintenance facility in Vancouver was not named in the 1988 law because Air Canada only acquired it in 2001 through the purchase of Canadian Airlines.
Roger Annis may be contacted at rogerannis@telus.net
URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org
In 2010, a federal judge accepted Air Canada's word that it planned to keep maintenance work in the targeted cities. The judge conveniently ignored a precise interpretation of what "maintenance work" constituted. Incredibly, if the IAM thought that AVEOS was being set up for an eventual downfall, it never said so publicly or acted accordingly. It turns out that Air Canada helped to precipitate the "bankruptcy" of AVEOS by quietly directing its work away from it. The long history of the dismantling of Air Canada -- what can only be described as the looting of a former public enterprise -- goes largely unmentioned by all parties involved.
What Road Ahead for Workers?
Private employers and especially federal and provincial governments are stepping up their attacks on jobs and public services. A more militant and coordinated response is needed by the union movement. All indications show the desire of workers for just such a course. Last year, the Occupy movement was widely hailed. Strike activity is on the upswing. Air Canada workers show the restive mood -- rank and file-initiated strikes and protests have become near commonplace and workers are typically rejecting concession agreements negotiated by their leaders.Working-class resistance has been strongest in Quebec. The social democratic NDP won a landslide victory in the province during the 2011 federal election. A mass student movement is refusing to bow to government threats and has mobilized tens of thousands in the streets.The challenge before the unions is to act as a social movement on behalf of the entire working class and break from the mould of job trusts focused on looking after the narrow interests of their dues-paying members. In the wake of the federal budget that attacked the OAS, newly elected leader of the NDP Tom Mulcair said the party would do "everything possible within the Parliamentary arena" to oppose the budget. But much more is needed. While it is useful to have a voice in Parliament on behalf of workers' interest, current battles will be won in the streets and on the picket lines. That is where attention and solidarity must be directed. Furthermore, all this will help open the door to the political challenge to capitalist rule that is needed and increasingly on the agenda. 1 The Air Canada maintenance facility in Vancouver was not named in the 1988 law because Air Canada only acquired it in 2001 through the purchase of Canadian Airlines.
Roger Annis may be contacted at rogerannis@telus.net
URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org
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