Huge UK Union Protest to NHS Cuts

National Healthcare Service (NHS) Cuts by Conservatives (Republicans in US)   Manchester earlier today... Surely this is worth more than a quick mention in the lamestream media.

50,000+ people marched in a union protest against austerity cuts and NHS changes during the Conservative Party conference in Manchester. "Authorities" claim it was one of the largest protests in recent history.

Frances O'Grady, TUC (Trade Unions Congress) General Secretary, said:  

"Austerity is having a devastating effect on our communities and services, with 21,000 NHS jobs lost over the last three months alone.

"The NHS is one of Britain's finest achievements and we will not allow ministers to destroy, through cuts and Privatisation, what has taken generations to build."


 "More than 50,000 people have taken part in a protest to ‘save the NHS’ (National Health Service) in Manchester, a stone’s throw away from the Conservative Party conference.

Meanwhile, a BBC journalist claimed he was stopped from filming the demonstration by security guards at the conference centre.

Norman Smith, the BBC’s political correspondent, said security staff had been told by police not to allow access to a balcony overlooking the protest, but no reason was given.

Greater Manchester Police said it was one of the largest protests it had ever handled. At one point, the demonstration snaking through the city centre was more than a mile long."

Source: http://metro.co.uk/2013/09/29/50000-rally-outside-tory-conference-amid-censorship-row-4127508

Like · · Share · 93639 · 2 hours ago · Edited · 

Manchester, England is like Chicago, Ill.

50,000 compares to a million in Chicago

 

Sharing the Road - 20 lb Bike Meets 1 Ton Car

Editorial

Sharing the Road: 

Can L.A. be a Cyclist's town?

Is biking a major shift in the city's lifestyle, or are the commutes too long and the roads too dangerous?

A cyclist rides past the Santa Monica Bike Center on Colorado Blvd. in Santa Monica.    (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times / September 29, 2013)

• Full coverage: Sharing the road in L.A.
• A cyclist asks: What are the rules of the road?
• Is 3 feet for cyclists too much to ask? Readers weigh in
• Victory for California cyclists: Riders get their three-foot cushion

By The Times editorial board

September 27, 2013, 5:42 p.m.

Colorado Boulevard is going on a diet. The section of the six-lane street that runs through Eagle Rock has begun a serious reducing regimen, with city transportation workers removing one motor vehicle lane in either direction, adding a landscaped median, improving crosswalks and re-striping the street for bike lanes.

Other parts of Los Angeles, from Porter Ranch to Venice to South L.A., have already been put on similar "road diets," and other slimming programs in every part of the city are slated for the near future. The same thing is happening up and down California — in fact, across the nation — as cities reallocate their asphalt to accommodate and encourage cyclists.
In many cases, the changes make cars move more slowly, and not by accident. It is the culmination of decades' worth of re-envisioning public space and re-imagining the use of public money.

FULL COVERAGE: Sharing the road in L.A.

Still, the new street thinking — road diets, bike lanes, bike trains (companion bike commuters), bike libraries (check out a bike, ride to your destination and check your bike in), CicLAvia — strikes many Angelenos as shockingly new and subversive in a city that just four years ago was still arguing over how best to turn parking lanes into commuter traffic lanes and which streets — Pico? Olympic? — should be remade as virtual freeways by adding as many lanes as could fit to get as many motorists from the Westside to downtown and back again as quickly and seamlessly as possible.
Even as the Orange Line whisked riders across the Valley, there remained talk of packing in more cars on other boulevards. Sherman Way, for example. Victory Boulevard. And even as most big cities have stopped building freeways, car-dependent — car-crazy? — Los Angeles is still grappling with the possible extension of the 710 through Alhambra, South Pasadena and perhaps Northeast L.A. on its way to Pasadena and the 210. More cars on more streets feeding to more freeways.

After all, isn't that what streets are for? Aren't they paved for cars, signed and signaled for drivers, paid for by motoring taxpayers? Aren't we built around drive-ins, drive-throughs, drop-offs? That's what Los Angeles has grown up to believe. The distances are so great, the hills are so steep, the commutes are so long. Road diets notwithstanding, there are so many cars, driving so fast and hogging space, leaving little margin for error for cyclists.
Can L.A. ever be a biker's town?

It's a question not just for the growing number of cyclists who commute to work and back on L.A. streets, or for the drivers who pass them (and are passed by them, at least during rush hour). It's a question that touches on the expenditure of tax money, the crafting of transportation and planning policy, the best and broadest use of city streets, Los Angeles' very identity — its inner psyche — and the shape of its future.

If we moved so quickly from a speed-the-traffic orientation to a just-slow-down approach, how sure can we be that we won't just switch back in another year or two? Is cycling a major shift in L.A.'s urban lifestyle, analogous to the resurgence of downtowns and the reversal of the commuter flow between the dense urban core and the single-family suburbs? Or is it a passing fancy, with barely more staying power than the Segway, or the formerly green bike lane that marked several blocks of downtown's Spring Street before the paint was stripped off this month? How could we, as one City Council candidate asked in the recent campaign, devote so much time, money, attention and road space to a cycling population that accounts for less than 4% of the city's street users? Or, as other candidates asked, how could we not — given the city's younger population, its demand for faster commutes, its insistence that not every traffic dollar go to making the streets more car-oriented?

How well does city government have its eyes on the road? As we create more bike lanes, for example, is there a commitment to step up citations of drivers who veer into them? Or of cyclists who ignore stop signs? What in the world is a "sharrow," and why does the symbol look so similar to the one that marks bike lanes? Have cyclist fatalities increased along with the number of bikes, and what should we be doing about that? Can we make riders, walkers and drivers all safer? And all get along? Can we make the road diet into more of a road buffet?

These questions are raised in conversations that bike groups, city officials and state lawmakers, motorist organizations and others have been having among themselves for years, but it is past time to mainstream that discussion, to share the ideas, critiques and complaints with the broader community.
The discussion necessarily is an intimate part of, and not separate from, the debate over whether to sell bonds to repair and repave streets, or whether drivers should be ticketed for parking at broken meters, or who should pay to fix the city's broken and dangerous sidewalks.

The Times' editorial page is pro-bike. We have noted repeatedly and with approval that cycling reduces traffic, cuts fossil fuel use and pollution and improves the health of those who do it; in fact, it's beneficial in so many ways that cities, especially those such as Los Angeles that are beset by automotive-related problems, should go to great lengths to encourage it. But we intend to consider in greater depth the particular policy issues that arise from greater bike use. We seek a dialogue with cyclists, drivers, pedestrians, taxpayers and others about where we're going collectively. And on how many wheels. Follow the conversation, and join in, at latimes.com/roadshare and #roadshareLA.

Poster:  The current writer at Unions United has been pressed into the asphalt by 4 Hit & Run cowards. Because there are so many Bikes, Auto Drivers in Europe must watch out for Bikes and Motorcycles.  They don't in sunny California.  Two teens in a white VW Convertible impaled me into a parked car Bumper.  It was a beautiful Sunday, the teens were busy chatting, or the music was too loud to hear bones crushing on metal.  And not a single Driver, in that constantly 
bumper-to-bumper stream of cars on Abbot Kinney (Sharrows), noticed the mauling.  
At least, no-one stopped to help.   

A Real Pope for All People

Hmmm, Where the Hell Did This "Money is Evil" Pope Come From?

The poor finally get a champion at the Vatican in Pope Francis.

Photo Credit: Iacopo Guidi/Shutterstock.com

September 25, 2013  |  

 

The bluebirds of happiness are chirping away in our nation's treetops these days, for America is now in the fifth year of economic recovery. Let's all sing "Happy Days Are Here Again," for stock prices are reaching record highs, corporate profits are soaring, and even the unemployment numbers are on the mend.

        But wait, what's this? Down below the treetops, way down there at the grassroots, poverty not only persists, but is spreading. Also, America's income disparity is worsening as middle-class workers are pushed into lower-wage jobs and poor people are pushed out entirely. Far from "Happy Days," joblessness among our lowest-income families is now the worst on record, having reached the staggering rate of 21 percent.
        The plight of the poor in our Land of Plenty is so dramatic that even the Republican leaders of the U.S. House have noticed them and are reaching out with open hands. Unfortunately, they are not offering a helping hand to the needy, but a cold, hard slap in the face. On Sept. 19, in a gratuitous act of political pettiness and human callousness, the GOP slashed $4 billion-a-year out of the food stamp program. Well, they explained, the food stamp subsidy just keeps expanding, despite the recovery our economy is enjoying, so we have to stop the excess.
        Apparently these congress critters never even visit reality. Hello, boneheads -- the program has expanded only because all of the "recovery" benefits went to the privileged few at the top, with those at the ground level losing income, thus having to reach desperately for food stamps as a life preserver. In fact, the program lifted about four million Americans above the poverty level last year and kept millions more from sinking deeper into destitution. It's a safety net that's been working exactly as it's supposed to -- and GOP ideologues don't want government programs that work.
        Also, just for the hell of it, these laissez-fairyland Dickensians added insult to the injury that their cuts would cause for millions of America's hard-hit people. They tacked on a provision to let the meanest of states force the needy families to submit to humiliating drug tests as the price of obtaining food for their families.
        In case you're wondering just how far Republican lawmakers have wandered into the wacky weeds of far-right ideology, note the babbling of Rep. Paul Ryan. Chairman of the House budget committee, this champion of extreme austerity has pushed feverishly for gutting the food stamp program. Why? Because, he rants, it's a government giveaway that turns our safety net into "a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency."
        A hammock? Food stamp allotments average under $4.50 a day. As for "able-bodied people," does he not know that two-thirds of the program's benefits go to children, the elderly and disabled people?
        In a society of gross and growing economic disparity, with mass unemployment and underemployment, food stamps are a minimal measure of our humanity and social morality. Forget the Paul Ryans -- here's the guy we should be listening to: "Excuse me if I use strong words," he recently said, "but where there is no work there is no dignity ... We don't want this globalized economic system which does us so much harm."
        Pointing directly at the wealthiest elites who push relentlessly to shred government safety nets and make workers powerless, he declared:P "[Widening disparity] is the consequence of a world choice, of an economic system that brings about this tragedy, an economic system that has at its center an idol which is called money." Such worship of mammon, he added, creates an economic culture that throws away the well-being of the many to enhance the fortunes of the few. "We have to say no to this throwaway culture. We want a just system that helps everyone," he concluded. That's the powerful moral voice of Francis, the Catholic Church's new Pope. He ended his comments with a fiery prayer calling on people to oppose the "cult of money" and asking God to "teach us to fight for work." Amen.

126 Sick Sailors Sue Fukushima's Owner

FUKUSHIMA DANGER

More U.S. military reveal radiation-related illnesses after Fukushima: Arm shrunk to half its size — Immune system attacking body — Leukemia, testicular cancer, thyroid problems, rectal bleeding, brain tumor http://bit.ly/16T7iXi

‘Fukushima made us sick’: Two Navy veterans join federal lawsuit against the Tokyo Electric Power Company over nuclear power plant meltdown http://dailym.ai/1dPuV87

Navy vets say Fukushima meltdown made them sick: http://cbsn.ws/15BPzDf

126 U.S. military members to sue TEPCO: http://bit.ly/16Jfng8

US Sailors & Families In Japan Contaminated By Fukushima Meltdown While DOD Stops Registry http://bit.ly/1biFTpf
 

Service members continue to be gravely ill from this disaster, even in Korea, possibly from radioactive area fish and imported Japanese contaminated food.

My friends son, at a US Air Force base in Korea, and several other enlisted personnel there may die from this disaster. He was never in Japan. He was never ill in his life, yet after eating fish, rice, and some special occasion beef at the mess hall, he has lost 40 lbs. and overheard the South Korean doctor they sent him to say he may die. He is not the first nor will he be the last to suffer because our Obamanation of a President refuses to "BAN ALL JAPANESE IMPORTS" and immediately withdraw all US Forces from deadly contaminated Japan.

Watch the interview with the only US Army General with the guts to tell all-Major General Albert Stubblebine III, former Commander of all US Forces in the Grenada Invasion at: www.radiationhealthnews.com.

*comment on this thread: http://1.usa.gov/1fym2nM

*

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California Has Highest Minimum Wage in America

Governor Brown Signs Historic Minimum Wage Increase

By Rebecca Band

 

Imagine having to choose between buying soap for yourself or diapers for your baby. Or being forced to walk miles to work because you chose breakfast over bus fare. Or being left with no choice but to go to the local food bank in order to feed your family. These are the harsh realities that millions of low-wage workers in California face every day.  But fortunately for them (and for our state as a whole), their future just got a lot brighter.

Wednesday morning, Governor Brown made history by signing AB 10 (Alejo), a sorely-needed and long-overdue wage increase for California’s lowest-wage workers that passed through the Legislature with strong support from the California Labor movement.

To commemorate the momentous occasion, Gov. Brown held two special press events today. At this morning’s event in Los Angeles, Gov. Brown and Assemblymember Luis Alejo were joined by a group of local car wash workers, and the Oakland bill signing event this afternoon was filled with young men and women enrolled in the pre-apprentice program at the Cypress Mandela Training Center.

Governor Brown:

Our society is experiencing a growing gap between those at the top and those at the bottom. Our social fabric is being ripped apart. Today, we sew that fabric a little tighter together, as we raise the wages of those who labor at the bottom … This is an important step to raise the floor, even as the floor and ceiling get farther and farther apart. So today we’re celebrating something very important: we’re taking a step, through our state Legislature, to give back to those who work so hard but get the least amount of compensation.

While the cost of everything from housing to food and transportation has skyrocketed all across the state, California’s minimum wage workers haven’t seen a raise in five years, even while neighboring states with lower costs of living have raised their wages. AB 10 will raise up more than 2.3 million low-wage workers who’ve been struggling to get by.

Yaveth Gomez, a college graduate who received a degree in Film Studies from UC Berkeley in 2009, now works as a dishwasher at a restaurant and earns $8.50 an hour. He shared his personal story about being forced to go to the food bank when he couldn’t afford groceries, and said

I believe this minimum wage raise is going to help a lot of people. $8.50 is really not enough for us.
The statewide wage increase comes on the heels of San Jose’s monumental minimum wage ballot measure, passed in 2012, which increased the city’s wage to $10 and proved that raising the wage has a positive and simulative effect on the economy.

The new statewide minimum wage will be implemented in two steps; increasing from $8 to $9 per hour in July of next year, followed by another one-dollar increase to $10 in January of 2016.

By providing an estimated $2.6 billion in additional wages to the state’s lowest-paid workers, California will reap $1 billion in new economic growth as +workers spend their increased wages, and job growth will expand as businesses hire to meet the increased consumer demand. (Learn more about the benefits of a $10 minimum wage.)
Assemblymember Luis Alejo, the sponsor of AB 10:

This [minimum wage] bill got a lot of momentum at the beginning of the year, when President Obama called for raising the federal minimum wage. The President supports it, the American people support it across the country, and yet our Congress has failed to act. But California is often the vanguard for the rest of our nation, and we’re always leading the way to strengthen and building our middle class – and this [new law] is an example of that. Today it’s California; tomorrow it’s going to be many other states that follow in our example.

Written by Rebecca Band

 

California Labor Federation Executive Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski:
Today’s bill signing affirms California’s role as leader in supporting low-wage workers. This is a historic day for all Californians, as we now have the highest minimum wage in the country. 

While this is an important victory and a huge step in the right direction, our fight for a living wage for every single California is far from over. We will continue to work tirelessly to ensure all California workers earn enough to support their families.
Rebecca Band
Labor’s Edge
Wednesday 25 September 2013

UFCW Organizes 8000 Workers at 50 CVS Chains

 

Economic Justice, Organizing, Retail, Southern California Bargaining, UFCW Industries, UFCW Values

Hundreds of CVS Workers in California Join UFCW Local 770

Sep 26, 2013

Hundreds of CVS workers across the Los Angeles area have voted to join UFCW Local 770.

Since May, hundreds of workers at Los Angeles area CVS stores have stood together and joined UFCW Local 770, bringing the total number of newly unionized CVS stores to 50 and more than doubling the number of new stores under contract.

These workers join more than 8,000 CVS workers in 11 states and the District of Columbia who are already members of the UFCW. By joining the UFCW, these workers have voted for a better life.

Go UFCW.  Show us how to organize.

CWA Phone Union Trains Activists in IOWA

Iowa State Council Training

The Iowa State Council sponsored a training on movement building, LPAT infrastructure and developing political goals. Participants included members of CWA Locals 7176, 7181, 7172, 7101, 7102 and 7171. CWA Legislative Director Shane Larson and Political Director Rafael Navar presented and led a discussion on critical political issues and races.

To show activists what a partnership with other progressive organizations can look like, Minnesota State Council President Mona Meyer and Terin Mayer, the lead economy organizer of TakeAction Minnesota, gave a presentation on how they've come together to build a movement for social and economic justice.

Already there's been a lot of good work being done in Iowa. Activists are supporting union-friendly candidates for hospital boards to help our nurses' organizing and bargaining campaigns. And CWA is growing its partnership with Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a grassroots organization dedicated to community organizing.

CWA local activists from across the state attend the Iowa State Council's training on movement building.

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