WW News Service Digest #111
1) On the picket line: 6/15/2000
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2) Protests hits sweatshops, environmental destruction
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3) Cuban press takes up Mumia's case
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4) Does death penalty deter crimes?
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5) Stopping imperialism's war crimes
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6) European inquiry finds NATO guilty
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7) 'We want a verdict that leads to action'
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 15, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
ON THE PICKET LINE
NORTHWEST FLIGHT ATTENDANTS WIN BIG
Flight attendants at Northwest Airlines have approved a
new contract, ending a three-year struggle for better pay
and benefits. The five-year pact was approved by 68 percent
of the flight attendants who voted. The agreement boosts
wages from 8 to 27 percent initially and up to 120 percent
over the next four years, according to the union.
Northwest's 11,000 flight attendants, who are members of
Teamsters Local 2000, also gained significant benefit
improvements. The new agreement includes an 86 percent
increase in pension rates--a big issue during the contract
campaign--and full domestic partner health benefits. In
addition, the pact provides stronger work rules to protect
flight attendants.
The new agreement was won after flight attendants voted
down a weaker tentative agreement last August. The workers
rejected the earlier proposal by 69 percent and sent their
bargaining committee back to the table to get a better
deal. Flight attendants then launched a valiant struggle
that in the end won them better pay, benefits and
protections.
When many cabin crewmembers called in sick over the New
Year's holiday, Northwest was forced to cancel some 300
flights. The company retaliated by suing the union, firing
18 flight attendants and conducting court-ordered searches
of workers' home computers trying to find evidence of a
"sick-out." The union grieved the firings. With approval of
the new agreement, Northwest's lawsuit against the union
has been dropped.
`SUMMER OF LABOR' IN SANTA MONICA, CALIF.
Hotel bosses in Santa Monica, Calif., are in for a long,
hot "Summer of Labor" as hotel workers gear up to organize.
On May 25, a drumming, singing throng of more than 500
hotel workers and supporters marched to the upscale Loews
Santa Monica Beach Hotel. With clenched fists raised high,
they kicked off the summer campaign by roaring their
support for a union while a delegation demanded that Loews
management not interfere in the organizing drive.
Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 814 is
spearheading the drive to gain new members by pushing
hotels to recognize the union as soon as most workers sign
up to join. Known as a "card check" election, the process
allows workers to gain union protection and benefits much
more quickly by sidestepping years of haggling before the
National Labor Relations Board.
Loews has tried to undercut the union drive by modestly
improving some benefits and increasing hourly pay more than
$1 for some workers. But the 30-member organizing committee
is not being taken in by small change and a few perks.
"We know why they are giving us raises," said Ricardo
Uribe, a housekeeper and union organizer at Loews. "They
know we want to organize, but that won't stop us."
"It's more than the money," said organizer Kurt Peterson.
"It's about sharing control of the hotel. When you have a
union, you have a voice." The Loews action came on the
heels of a landslide vote in April to retain the union at
Santa Monica's Fairmont Miramar Hotel.
JUSTICE FOR JANITORS IN SILICON VALLEY
With Silicon Valley's high tech companies awash in cash,
janitors who clean their facilities are pressing for higher
wages. "Justice for Janitors" is waging a living wage
campaign to embarrass the high-profile companies and get
them to improve compensation for some 5,500 cleaners who
belong to Service Employees Local 1877.
"These tech companies are very concerned about their
public image and rightly so," said Tom Csekey, vice
president and lead negotiator for Local 1877. "It's given
them a black eye for years to come that they tried to crush
these janitors that are cleaning all their marble halls."
The companies targeted--from Hewlett-Packard to Cisco
Systems to 3Com--read like a who's who in high tech. The
union wants them to lean on cleaning contractors to raise
wages by agreeing to pay higher contract prices.
Janitors were given a big boost by their successful
campaign in Los Angeles, where 8,000 janitors recently won
significant pay raises and one of the best contracts in
more than 20 years. Now they're aiming to spread that
success to wealthy Silicon Valley and other areas of the
country.
"The resources are here--more so than anywhere else," said
Blanca Gallegos, who came to Silicon Valley after
coordinating the Los Angeles campaign. "These well-known
companies can set the standard." The union is demanding a
three-year contract with an annual increase of about $1.30
an hour and that employers pay full medical benefits.
Maria Robledo, who supports three children on just $7.64
an hour, says the extra $52 a week would mean meat on the
table more than two days a week. A single mother, Bobledo
has cleaned cubicles and thrown out the trash at Lam
Research facilities for the last eight years.
"What we're asking is not much at all," Robledo said.
"With that money, I can buy more food for my family and new
shoes for my son."
- END -
(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
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Message-ID: <001701bfd468$5d4d5660$0a00a8c0@home>
From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [WW] Protests hits sweatshops, environmental destruction
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 08:18:49 -0400
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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 15, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
NEW YORK:
PROTESTS HIT SWEATSHOPS, ENVIRONMENTAL
DESTRUCTION
By Anne Pruden
New York
During the last weekend of May and the first weekend of
June, militant anti-sweatshop protests were held in
Manhattan and Brooklyn. The actions showed how unity
between students and labor to fight exploitation is
growing.
A multinational group of 75 high school students, union
members and others picketed a Gap store on busy Fifth
Avenue in Manhattan June 4. Led by the Student Committee
Against Labor Exploitation, they demanded, "Stop Gap
sweatshops!" Shoppers were handed fliers explaining the
protest.
SCALE speakers told how Gap workers in Saipan--a U.S.
colony in the Pacific--receive less than half the U.S.
minimum wage. These workers, mostly Asian women, toil 70
hours a week sewing clothes that are sold for high prices
on the Gap's racks.
In Brooklyn on May 27, protesters picketed outside an Old
Navy store. Most shoppers responded favorably to this
action, called by the Wetlands Preserves Environmental and
Social Justice Activism Center.
The Donald Fisher family, founders and executives of the
the Gap, also own the Old Navy and Banana Republic
clothing-store chains.
Recently this family has bought large tracts of old-growth
forest in California and opened them to exploitation for
profit. This has meant ending salmon fisheries and wildlife
habitats there. Cutting down the redwood forests also
contributes to pollution of drinking water.
A lawsuit filed by labor unions last year continues to
wind its way through the courts in the first attempt to
hold the U.S. garment industry responsible for mistreating
workers in plants abroad. The Gap Inc., Tommy Hilfiger, The
Limited, J.C. Penny, Wal-Mart and Sears are named in the
lawsuit.
Meanwhile the protests against these bloodsucking
capitalists continue--and must become louder--since
injustice and exploitation is seldom remedied through U.S.
courts.
- END -
(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
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changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
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Message-ID: <001d01bfd468$71d2f040$0a00a8c0@home>
From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [WW] Cuban press takes up Mumia's case
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 08:19:23 -0400
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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 15, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
CUBAN PRESS TAKES UP MUMIA'S CASE
By Greg Butterfield
The floodgates have opened.
Politicians who advocate the racist, anti-working class
death penalty are on the defensive. Many articles about the
controversy in the mainstream U.S. press--from the New York
Daily News to USA Today--cite Mumia Abu-Jamal's case as one
of those driving the movement to end executions.
Now comes new solidarity, from Cuba.
Granma, the daily newspaper of Cuba's socialist
government, published an important article on Abu-Jamal in
its May 31 edition. The article by Mario Jorge Munoz began
by quoting one of Abu-Jamal's recent columns denouncing
police brutality.
"Such denunciations were written from a cold cell on
`death row' in Pennsylvania," wrote Granma. "For 18 years
the author is aware that at any moment they could carry out
the sentence. For that reason he expounds as if each moment
were his last.
"The word, each day ever sharper, continues to be his most
powerful weapon in unmasking the countless injustices of
the system and to show his support for the countless noble
causes that are still fought on the planet."
The article describes how police targeted the young Black
journalist, his subsequent arrest and frame-up for the
murder of Philadelphia cop Daniel Faulkner, and the biased
trial that followed.
Munoz quoted Abu-Jamal's trial judge Albert Sabo's
statement that "justice is just an emotion, a sentiment."
The Cuban journalist added that the judge's "hatred of
Blacks was on the list of his deepest sentiments."
The U.S. policy of targeting poor and working people,
especially people of color, for execution is abhorrent to
Cubans, who have built a society based on solidarity. Cuba
has been a haven for exiled Black freedom fighters like
Assata Shakur.
Abu-Jamal "is sentenced to death for his opinions and
political conduct," the Granma article concluded.
"The Cuban press is making a high priority of Mumia's
case," said Gloria La Riva of the International Action
Center. She said Cuba will host a roundtable discussion on
Abu-Jamal and the U.S. death penalty the weekend of June
17.
Among those participating from the United States will be
Pam Africa of International Concerned Family & Friends of
Mumia Abu-Jamal, lawyer Leonard Weinglass, Monica Moorehead
of Millions for Mumia/IAC, Gloria Rubac of the Texas Death
Penalty Abolition Movement and journalist Rosemary Mealy.
La Riva described the roundtable as "a new institution to
engage the whole population in discussion" that originally
focused on Eli n Gonz lez. The popular roundtables are
broadcast on national TV and radio several times a week.
Transcripts are made available in pamphlet form.
STUDENT ACTIONS ON BOTH COASTS
In the United States, students continue to organize for a
new trial as the school year winds down.
In New York, hundreds of young people turned out June 3
for a concert to benefit Abu-Jamal's legal defense and
victims of police brutality. Hip-hop artists Mos Def and
Dead Prez headlined the show, "Voices for the Voiceless."
Hunter College Student Liberation Action Movement sponsored
the event.
Students at two University of California-Santa Cruz
campuses won the right to have the political prisoner speak
at their graduation ceremonies. His taped message will be
played June 10 at Merrill College and June 11 at Stephenson
College, according to the Santa Cruz Coalition to Free
Mumia and all Political Prisoners.
Clark Kissinger of Refuse & Resist and other activists in
the Free Mumia movement will hold a news conference June 6
at the U.S. Probation Office in Brooklyn, N.Y. Kissinger
and 10 others were given harsh terms by a federal
magistrate for their participation in civil disobedience
last July 3 at the Liberty Bell.
Besides having to report "on every aspect of his life" to
a parole officer, Kissinger is restricted from visiting
Abu-Jamal or traveling outside New York without permission
for a year. A protest campaign is under way.
On June 2, Abu-Jamal's lawyers filed a new 15-page brief
with Federal Judge William H. Yohn. Prosecutors have until
June 23 to respond. Then Yohn is expected to set a hearing
to decide whether he will allow new evidence.
Abu-Jamal will be in the courtroom. Groups throughout the
country plan to mobilize for the hearing. Supporters will
pack the courtroom while others rally outside for a new
trial.
Major demonstrations are planned at both the Republican
and Democratic political conventions this summer. For more
information, readers can call Millions for Mumia/IAC at
(212) 633-6646 in New York or (415) 821-6545 in San
Francisco, or visit the Web site www.mumia2000.org.
- END -
(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
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changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
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Message-ID: <002301bfd468$8335ed60$0a00a8c0@home>
From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [WW] Does death penalty deter crimes?
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 08:19:52 -0400
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-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 15, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
DOES DEATH PENALTY DETER CRIMES?
By Monica Moorehead
The killing of five employees at a Queens, N.Y., Wendy's
restaurant on May 25 during a robbery has brought the
growing political debate in the United States on the
application of the death penalty into communities, shops
and work places.
New York state is seeking the death penalty for two Black
men accused of carrying out this massacre. In the minds of
many people, there may seem to be no alternative other than
to execute a person who randomly takes the life of another
human being.
Marxists and other politically conscious forces, however,
understand that there is much more involved here than meets
the eye. There are class issues--including racial and
national oppression--that determine who gets the death
penalty and who does not in this country.
As death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote,
"Millionaires need not apply."
Once these questions are examined, the logical conclusion
is that the death penalty under capitalism is inherently
anti-poor, pro-racist, anti-youth and anti-working-class,
and therefore must be abolished.
For many people, however, coming to such a conclusion is
not easy because of an intense class bias promoted by the
media and other bourgeois institutions. Probably the
biggest myth surrounding the death penalty is that it is an
effective deterrent for crime.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Statistics show
that the use of state-sanctioned executions helps to
increase society's tolerance of violence, not decrease it.
Violence is endemic to the social fabric of U.S. culture.
Youths experience daily doses of virtual violence through
video games, movies, television, music and the Internet.
The promotion of violence is a lucrative source of profits.
They also experience real violence in their communities,
often from the very force that claims to protect them--the
police. And if they go to jail for petty offenses, as
happens to a very high proportion of oppressed youth, they
are much more likely to get an education in how to commit
violent crimes than to receive any meaningful
"rehabilitation."
In an economic system based on "dog eat dog" and ruthless
competition rather than cooperation, there is also a
growing epidemic of alienation. And that can lead to deadly
eruptions like the Columbine High School massacre last
year.
Violence and poverty also go hand in hand. As unemployment
has declined nationwide in recent years, there have been
fewer economic crimes. In New York, however, a recent
report showed that poverty increased between 1995 and 1998
despite a gain in employment and education. The Wendy's
massacre happened during an armed robbery.
According to FBI studies, the murder rates in some states
that apply the death penalty are twice those of states that
don't. A 1988 report to the United Nations Committee on
Crime Prevention and Control, referring to documented
